


Barriers Both, Flesh and Stone

by RurouniHime



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Aurors, Blood Magic, Coming Out, Community: hd_inspired, Death Eaters, Divorce, Experimental Magic, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family, Fiendfyre, First Kiss, First Time, Founders fic, Harry Potter Next Generation, Infidelity, Labyrinth - Freeform, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Memory Magic, Post - Deathly Hallows, Post-Hogwarts, Professors, house-elves, test
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:38:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 55,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An educational experiment turns disastrous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barriers Both, Flesh and Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [khateh](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=khateh).



> Initially written for the Back to School round of hd_inspired. This fic has been edited since its original posting here: http://hd-inspired.livejournal.com/92369.html
> 
> So this little bundle of joy grew up to be a bonafide monster capable of stomping cities flat with its immense feet. Should have been a chapter fic…

**Draco**

 

In the end, Draco blamed it on Longbottom.

The Herbology professor shrugged, hands in his trouser pockets. “Best way to teach them what it was like,” he said.

Eleanora Barclay-Kurtz, professor of Arithmancy, broke the ensuing pause in conversation. “Could we actually do something like that here?” It was her way of speaking, always sharp with interest, her eyes squinted in a way that tended to make her students sit up straighter in anticipation.

Strangely enough, it wasn’t the Headmistress who answered, but Longbottom again. “Oh, especially here. It’s enclosed, it’s warded… We’ve a bevy of instructors who are each at the top of their field. It’d be a matter of getting permission from the Ministry, but—”

“And how exactly would we go about implementing this scenario?” Draco broke in; he didn’t feel it was said unkindly, just low and to the point.

This time it was Granger, always the one with solutions. “It’s likely I’ll find some spells in my personal books, and of course in the school library.” She wet her lips— Merlin, now _she_ was growing intrigued by the notion— and nodded. “I’m sure there will be something. Something we can combine. It’ll likely be very advanced, but— we could do it.”

Draco felt the need to speak sense again, being the dissenting Potions master that he was. “You realise we’re discussing a re-creation of something that occurred over twenty years ago. Something people are none too happy about, no less. Even if it isn’t an idiotic undertaking, it’s going to be much more involved than a simple class lecture.”

Longbottom nodded readily. “Yeah, it will. We’re going to have to obtain a permit that doesn’t exist yet, I should think. And there are construction issues to think about. The school’s changed a lot in twenty-three years.”

“I think,” Granger mused, tapping her wand against the table, “I think we should borrow some people, too.”

Draco stared at her, knowing what was coming, but McGonagall finally added her voice to the debate. “I assume you mean war veterans, Ms Granger.”

Granger nodded. “Well, yes, and also bystanders. From both sides.” She paused, looking around. “Well, if we’re going to recreate this correctly…” She spread her hands. “We need to represent both sides of the story.”

“It wouldn’t have to be terribly huge,” Longbottom added, and Granger’s face took on a scandalised look, as if he were in the process of ripping up one of her theses. “I was envisioning something localised. I mean, the school itself. Think about it, most of us were here during the war. We know better than anyone what it was like.”

It was a much deader silence, then, Draco thought. Or perhaps it was just him. Yes, they all knew better. They knew far too much about it, didn’t they?

But McGonagall was nodding. Pensive, but nodding. “And how long would you suggest the re-creation last?”

Longbottom lifted his shoulders again. “A week? Two? Just long enough to show them what it was actually like to grow up then. They’ve no idea, really, even if they get lectured on it every other day. And I wouldn’t want to interfere too much with NEWTs and OWLs.”

“Time off from studies to play around in the past.” Draco snorted and crossed his arms. “The Sixth Years will be thrilled.”

It earned him a glance from the Headmistress. She turned back to the rest of the room and did not say anything for several seconds. Then, “I will need detailed information from everyone if this is to proceed. Ms Granger, I want all of your research and ideas for magical combination on my desk in five days’ time. You may ask one of the other professors to cover your lessons if necessary. Mr Malfoy, if you will please see to it that the other instructors are informed of the situation and determine whether any of them have strong objections? Thank you. Ms Barclay-Kurtz, I am putting you in charge of developing permission forms. You will find an extensive record of rules and regulations concerning what we are and are not allowed to subject students to in Madam Pince’s personal care at the library. Mr Longbottom, I will ask that you manage the necessities with the Ministry. I believe they are going to require the presence of Aurors at the very least.”

Longbottom grinned. “I think I know just the Auror to bother with this.”

Draco suspected, much to his growing discomfort, that he knew, too.

* * *

Harry Potter, head of the Auror department, tossed his duffle on the floor and wrapped Longbottom in a stifling hug. “Neville! It’s been ages!”

“Yeah, a whole week,” Longbottom laughed. He returned Potter’s embrace. “Thanks for coming so quickly. You’ve beat Hermione to the punch; she’s still holed up in the library.”

“Has been for days, I expect.” Potter shoved his thumbs through his belt loops and stood back to survey the hall. “Been a while since I’ve been here, though. Looks bigger.”

“It is bigger. That’s one of the things we’ll have to change back, actually. That entire wall was rebuilt, if you remember.”

If the memories brought discomfort, Potter did not show it. He frowned fixedly at the wall in question and tapped the fingers of his right hand against his thigh. “Might want to leave it, actually. It’ll mean fewer permit requirements, for one thing. And it’ll place Hogwarts as it is now directly into the war’s time frame. Kids’ll respond more to something they recognise.”

Longbottom nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a good point. I’ll run it by Minerva. She’ll be thrilled about added simplicity.”

“Yes, well.” Potter smirked absently, still perusing the walls, the stairs, and the towering ceiling. “I haven’t exactly told the Ministry what we’re considering here. It’ll be best if we give them the most polished plan we can come up with. Work out all the kinks first and let them squabble over what they can find after.”

“So you don’t hold out much hope, Potter,” Draco interrupted at last from where he stood at the entrance of the dungeon staircase. Both Longbottom and his visitor turned. Longbottom nodded in greeting, but Potter…

Draco didn’t particularly want to see that expression. He’d known he wouldn’t be able to avoid it, though, as soon as he knew for sure which Auror was coming to the school. Pity was only a sliver there, but the compassion into which it had nestled was more than disconcerting. Draco glowered. “Well?”

Potter’s face smoothed slowly. He didn’t move, but when he spoke, his voice carried across the hall right to Draco as if he were speaking to him from two feet away. That voice was so damned difficult to cleanse from one’s memory. “I think they’ll side with the educational value. If Hermione, if all of you, can pull this off, the learning opportunities will be phenomenal.”

Draco resisted the urge to fidget. Also to remind Potter that people ahead of their time, particularly with regards to the school, had never been thought of fondly by the Ministry. He met Potter’s stare in the waiting silence of the hall before finding his words properly again.

“Just as long as the boundaries are well laid out this time around,” he said lowly. And turned and went back down the staircase into the dungeons.

* * *

Potter found Draco when the windows high on the walls of his chambers had darkened to an opaque black and the torches flickered from the walls. But then, Draco was a fool for opening the door.

“Potter.”

The man gazed at him for some seconds— or maybe it was just the tick of Draco’s heart stretching time into infinite— before giving way to a small smile. “Not much of a hello up there.”

Draco tightened his hand around the edge of the door. “Do we say hello?”

Potter’s easiness sank a little. He lifted his chin just a touch, and Draco’s throat went dry with what he felt coming, felt it in his bones.

And moved first.

“Come on, then, Potter.” He released his grip on the door and moved backward, feeling each step’s distance like a solid object pressing against his body. “Have a bloody nightcap.”

He didn’t hear Potter move immediately, but he didn’t care much either. All he cared about was getting back to his chair, slumping into it, and forcing his way through the coming ordeal with as much grace and efficiency as he could manage.

But Harry Potter was nothing if not persevering, and he followed Draco through the room to where his desk stood, dropping into the chair on the other side. Draco watched Potter’s gaze flick to the only other door in the room, partially opened on the darkened bedchamber beyond, and felt his cheeks heat. He sat abruptly, jarring his chair and jerking Potter’s attention back. “Brandy?” he asked shortly.

“Sure.” No pause. Damn the man. So collected, even in times of stress. It felt demeaning, even now after so many months. Draco scowled and grabbed the bottle of brandy, pouring Potter a measure and nudging it across the desk. Potter took it and downed the lot of it, then held the empty glass between fingers and thumb. Draco knew Potter was looking at him; he glared back.

“So,” he said stiffly. “Intrigued by our modest little project?”

Potter’s eyes were still that piercing green and they still stared right through him. Draco’s desire for alcohol, nursed all evening, evaporated as if it were the drink itself. He wasn’t going to be inebriated under that gaze this time.

“A little worried, actually,” Potter finally answered. He gave a soft sigh. “Not sure I’m up for going back to that.”

Draco knew exactly what Potter meant. Hell, a jailed Death Eater in the grips of the last Dementor on earth could have peered through his cell bars, uttered the same words, and Draco, and Potter, would have understood it all. They’d been through the same fire, whichever side they’d started from.

“Well,” Draco muttered, letting his frustration gain a little too much leeway with his tone, “personal demons are hardly important when _education_ is at stake.”

Potter just looked at him, a new sharpness in his eyes, and Draco thought about throwing the brandy at the wall. He was never this tense, never this ready to crack and leap and destroy. Fucking hell, what was it about Potter’s presence that always lowered him to his weakest point?

Or found him there already.

“How are you doing, Draco?”

“Oh.” Draco shoved his chair back and stood. “I knew it would get round to this. You may leave now.”

But try telling that to the man who had stood his ground against trolls, Death Eaters, and Voldemort himself. Draco Lucius Malfoy had to be nothing but an indulgence compared to that. Indeed, Potter made no move except to raise his eyebrows.

“Clearly not well,” the man ventured.

Draco scowled. “My invitation to visit has been withdrawn, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s just a question.” Still so calm! And of course, it made absolute sense that Draco couldn’t be.

“Still writing notes to my file, Potter?” Draco snapped. Harry Potter’s eyes narrowed, and then he did rise, drawing himself up to match Draco’s height, to move past it just a bit. But all Draco could think was that Potter still recalled the incredible gloom of his manor’s foyer, still heard Astoria’s crazed shrieks and the crack of glass and fine pottery.

Potter took a deep breath. “You don’t have a file, Draco. Not about that.” There was warning in his voice, and patience, but Draco wasn’t going to let it be that easy.

“Thank you,” he returned icily. “Now if you don’t mind, Potter? I’ve a long day tomorrow.”

Potter looked at him silently.

Draco had never expected Astoria to react the way she had that night five months ago. He _did_ still expect to see his mother’s priceless Atlantian vase gracing the molded pedestal that stood between the manor’s sitting room and its main dining room. But it was, of course, no longer there, too damaged to be repaired. Its vibrant blue had flickered in the eyes of his son where Scorpius stood at the top of the stairs, gazing down on the scene below, at his mother screaming at his father, ripping at her own hair and finally yanking Draco’s wand from his pocket and slashing it furiously at him. It had not been the curse Draco expected, or Astoria had been too far gone to cast it properly. The next blast had gone into the massive hearth across from the front doors, along with a shrieked demand for a Ministry Auror. Draco hadn’t expected that, either.

Naturally, it had been Harry Potter who answered the summons.

What a miracle that it had been only Potter. That night, Draco had been far beyond feeling the humiliation of such a presence at that moment. Or maybe he was just beyond reaction in general. He could remember standing, wordless, listening to every slur his wife screamed at him, knowing that every accusation, whether truthful or not, was being absorbed not only by the ears of Harry Potter, but also by those of his son upstairs on the landing. He could remember Potter taking the wand from Astoria even as he calmed her with placating words. He could remember the confusion under that green gaze vanishing as the reasons for Astoria’s grief clicked gradually together.

He couldn’t remember Potter ever once looking at him, not until Astoria had spent her anger and collapsed to her knees on the floor. Then their eyes had finally met. And now Potter was looking at him again.

“Potter.” Draco gestured toward the door. “If you please.”

Surprisingly, Potter left his quarters as easily as he’d left the manor that night. Only this time, Draco didn’t follow him. He stood, stiffer than stone, watching the other man walk to the door and open it. Potter looked back once. Draco could see he recalled everything.

“Good night, Malfoy.”

The door creaked shut, cutting the torch-lit hallway and Harry Potter’s form from view.

Draco decided he was done thinking about it. He was finished, and he was good at that part; he’d had months of practice.

But he couldn’t help thinking that here was yet another thing he hadn’t expected: Potter, finding his way down to his chambers on the very first night of his return to Hogwarts, and successfully getting inside long enough to stir up all this self-loathing. Draco hadn’t expected to feel so tumbled by it, so out of control.

At least he’d kept everything down to business this time.

Draco moved slowly across the room to the other door and pushed it the rest of the way open. A torch flickered to life within and Draco saw his bed, neatly made in Slytherin green, his rich oak dresser tall against the far wall, and the robes he’d worn that day still lying where he’d flung them upon re-entry to his rooms.

Wondered if Potter had glanced at his bedroom door on purpose.

Draco squeezed his eyes shut and leaned against the doorjamb.

He hadn’t expected to cheat on his wife five months ago, either.

* * *

The very idea of boundaries in war was a contradiction; war did not have boundaries, regardless of what those in power said. It hadn’t had them then, but it would have them now. A taste was all the students were going to get: a slice of uneasiness in their dreams, the subtle weight of unnamable stress day to day. The idea of disappearing students was Granger’s, and a good, if morbid, one. Every other day, a teacher or a student would be selected to “vanish,” just as very real people had done years ago with more dire consequences. Nothing violent, nothing startling; each student would be informed prior to his or her disappearance and would quietly retire to another area of the castle to don advanced glamours courtesy of the new Charms professor, continue their lessons, and witness everything that went on after they were gone.

But that was nothing compared to the issue of the Death Eaters. For they had to have them. Granger insisted, and frankly, Potter did as well.

What surprised Draco was the fact that Potter also insisted on the back stories of Death Eaters, if they could get them. Anonymously given, of course, but relinquished to the Headmistress so that the students could hear nearly firsthand that bad was not all bad and good was not all good. There were reasons for everything.

Draco fought it. His son was bloody well at the school, even if he wasn’t currently speaking to Draco on any sort of regular basis. Greg Goyle’s child was there as well, and Nott’s silent daughter, not to mention others who remained more obscure in their ancestry. The war had taken many, after all, and left their children in the care of other willing parents.

Not surprisingly, McGonagall removed the First, Second, and Third Years from the re-creation entirely. The ideal time for the study was during spring holiday, and the less willing parents could simply keep their children at home until the scenario played itself out. It was mainly for the fifth, sixth, and seventh year students, though Granger lobbied strongly to include the Fourth Years, on the grounds that they were not too young or insensible to handle what the re-creation would throw at them. She got her way, of course.

Potter shifted at this, but kept silent, though his expression did close for the rest of that meeting.

Draco’s own thoughts were inextricably trapped with the Sixth Years.

They had not asked for the story of his sixth year. Not Granger, not McGonagall, and not Potter. There seemed to be a barrier there between the tale of his most hellish year and the curiosity of the others, and no one wanted to breach it. So Draco had done it on his own, quilling the basics onto a sheet of parchment and slipping it under the Headmistress’ office door.

In class, he watched his Sixth Years and wonder what it would feel like to hear about a boy their age suddenly made responsible for saving his entire family in the worst possible way. Would it curl their innards? Steal their appetites? Make them _think?_

That was the bloody idea, wasn’t it?

Potter was a quiet, if much discussed, addition to the school. During the very first dinner in the Great Hall, his children, the young girl and the boy Scorpius’ age, had literally thrown themselves at their father when he entered, making a ruckus that drew every eye. Their chatter overlapped their greetings for several minutes, and Draco left the room before any of the three had managed to take a bite of their meals.

Draco had suspected for a long time that Potter’s children did not hate their father. It was somewhat difficult to see it displayed right in front of him, however. He’d made his way back to his chambers, in unknowing preparation for Potter’s later disastrous visit, and swallowed himself up in thoughts of why similar situations heralded contentment for one family and cold grief for another.

* * *

Draco remembered getting very drunk the night Potter took him home. The rationalisation then had been simple. He had just been thrown spectacularly out of his own manor. His wife was dissolving in name the marriage which had already been dissolving in meaning for over a year. His son could be doing anything from hiding in his room to Apparating Merlin knew where, in a state of panic that made splinching sound like a blessing. Potter had settled Draco on the couch and talked to him for somewhere near half an hour. He’d fed Draco on something that filled his belly but tasted like chalk. He’d wordlessly given him water. And then he’d gone out. To this day, Draco could not recall if his host had gone to get more food or run an errand at work, never mind the lateness of the hour. Draco had been in a soupy fog that included himself, the shrill ringing of Astoria’s voice in his ears… and the fear that his wife would bend her leftover rage onto the only other person still in the mansion.

He’d tried to Floo back, stumbling to Potter’s fireplace and heaving half the contents of the powder jar into the flames. But she’d warded against him, or Potter had locked him in, and the Floo threw him back onto his saviour’s rug in a sooty, gasping heap. After that, there was no memory on earth strong enough to bring his Patronus to him, not even to message his son. Draco recalled the length of the hallway to Potter’s kitchen, the places where he’d fallen hard against the wall, and the dampness on the backs of his hands when he wiped his cheeks.

There’d been a cabinet of wine. Draco got fittingly plastered and then numbed there on the floor of Harry Potter’s pantry.

He could still hear the sound of Harry’s keys jingling as he came back through the front door, could still hear the way his own name bounced off the walls. Harry had a deep, full voice, one that hardened as its owner’s apprehension grew, until the voice finally found its way to him. Said his name again, perhaps; Draco couldn’t be sure of much. The body it was attached to extended a hand, and Draco allowed himself to be pulled up.

That body was tall and firm, he must have thought, stumbling up from the floor and into Harry’s grip. And it was a grip of both arms, clasped around his torso tightly enough to keep him from returning to the floor. Harry did say his name then. Draco explicitly remembered the sad lilt to the word, the downturn at the end and the rush of breath that followed it. Harry hadn’t let go, hadn’t even moved. His eyes were wide and dark green, fixed on Draco’s face. Draco could smell him, a gentle scent of clean fabric and musk. Sweat. Draco gripped Harry’s arms right above the elbows, and one of Harry’s hands slid around to his lower back, steadying the sway of his body. It was too much like being embraced; too much like being held up against a heaving body, halfway between a wall and intense heat. Halfway between bed sheets and a lover. Draco dropped against Harry, boneless, needing to touch, _wanting_ to work that scent into himself, to smell Harry on his own skin, in his hair. He tasted sweat against his lips, the quick thrum of Harry’s pulse at the hollow of his throat, and he pressed his mouth there. Harry’s hand tightened on his waist and Draco pulled up, gathering Harry’s face into his hands, cradling, mouthing the other man’s lips until they parted.

Draco remembered tasting Harry’s tongue and hearing the murmur he made.

 _Draco,_ Harry breathed, and pulled back. The chill was mortifying. Draco pressed forward, found his way down Harry’s side and hooked his fingers beneath Harry’s belt. The skin of the other man’s stomach was hot, contracting with each breath. Fingers encircled Draco’s wrist; Harry’s other hand wound into his hair and lifted his head. But he said nothing, just looked at Draco, and the silence thumped in Draco’s belly and heart and groin. He maneuvered Harry’s mouth back down, caught it. Kissed it. Felt Harry kiss back.

Harry pulled free once more and then parted them completely. Draco remembered vertigo, falling, feeling as if his innards might find their way outward. Harry caught him again, whispering something. Draco didn’t understand any of it. His lips tingled; his body was a numb, pulsing mass of heat. He fell sideways. Harry gathered an arm around his waist and led him dazedly to the couch and then down onto it. Draco remembered groaning, feeling sick. Turning toward the back cushion. Curling so very tightly. Moments later, he registered a blanket over his body. The lights were off, but the sense that Harry was still in the room was strong.

Sleep was too hard to fight and Draco gave up without another thought, without even the ability to think.

He woke because he’d lost the blanket and the cool air slipped over his lower back where his shirt had rolled up. His shivering played a staccato rhythm to his thick and thumping headache; Draco licked his lips and found his entire mouth dry and aching. He grabbed hold of a couch cushion with one hand, fingers digging deep into the fabric, and eased himself upright. Well past dawn and heading towards noon. The golden glow hurt his eyes. His ears felt muffled, every turn of his neck was a near-miss with sicking up. Draco got to his feet, sure he was going to fall over again, and found that the sitting room was empty and the house silent.

There was another hallway; he could see it leading into shadows from where he stood wobbling. Draco groaned and pressed both hands to his eyes. Wet his lips again. A tiny, insignificant taste swept up upon the tip of his tongue, and abruptly he remembered kissing Harry Potter.

Doing more than kissing. Caressing. Grabbing and holding.

He had to leave. He knew it almost before the memory fully coalesced. Draco felt doubly ill. He stumbled a few steps away from the couch, wondering about his clothing, realising that such thoughts were utterly stupid and beside the point, that his foolishness and shame had finally gone as deep as they could possibly go, and that he did not want to look Harry in the eye ever, ever again. He found his wand on the coffee table and unthinkingly made it to the entrance of the hallway before shying away from searching for the loo somewhere down it— where he might also find Harry. He went to the kitchen instead. The water from the sink was cold and harsh, sobering enough to bring a fresh wave of nausea and embarrassment over him.

He’d ruined his family the night before, hadn’t he?

With his shirt soaked around the collar and unbuttoned to his navel, Draco made for the fireplace. The spilled Floo powder had been cleaned up and the bowl refilled. He put a shaking hand into the mound of white and ignited a fire, suddenly convinced beyond anything that the house’s owner would choose that moment to show his face. The fire crackled loudly as he flung the powder in and whispered, “Malfoy Manor.”

When Draco found himself in the manor’s largest fireplace a few seconds later, in front of Scorpius, who was barefoot and in his insistently scruffy clothing, he received nothing but a furious stare. His son clenched his hand tightly around the empty mug he was holding— Draco still remembered the lack of colour in Scorpius’ knuckles, so very angry and pale— before he turned and took himself and the mug right out of the room, slamming the door on his way through. Otherwise, the manor was quiet, a tense sort of peace that made Draco feel suddenly and horribly as if that was what peace meant for him now. He would never retrieve true solace as he had known it before.

There was no sign of Astoria that morning, save for the barely-worn seasonal robes still hanging in their conjoined closet, and Draco did check. Each step up the many staircases and down the long, dim corridors was heavy and nauseating. Not a speck of dust in some of these wings, nor a sign that any living, breathing person ever set foot in them. It was like walking through an ancient castle or a museum: everything looked beautiful and nothing looked as if it could or should be touched, as if it would survive the presence of people. His wife’s belongings, the ones she had not taken, looked too pristine. Very little of him in them. Wherever she had gone, she would be back, only Draco hadn’t the faintest idea of when, nor the will to figure it out.

He saw Scorpius once more as they crossed paths along the main staircase’s large landing. This time Draco noted deep circles under his son’s eyes and a drag to his step before the boy noticed him. Scorpius’ scowl was hard and quick; he shook his head to flip the blond shag back. His shoulders jerked rigidly upright and he strode into the hallway to Draco’s left. Draco heard swift footsteps down the corridor, the creak of Scorpius’ massive silveroak door, and then the snug thunk of it as his son shut himself into his bedroom.

Scorpius didn’t come out for another day and didn’t speak a word to Draco for seven more.

* * *

There were times when Draco had no idea what he was doing to his family. He often thought about whether Potter knew what _he_ was doing.

Potter’s divorce was three years old, and had swamped the wizarding news for months. Irreconcilable differences, according to the legitimate papers; great scandal and heartache from the likes of _Witch Weekly_. It had taken an encounter with the former Mrs Potter and her ex-husband in Diagon Alley for Draco to decide which tale he believed.

There was ice cream in the hands of all three Potter children, a good-natured argument making itself known between the eldest and the youngest, and a serene sort of companionship between Ginevra Weasley and the father of her children. All of that would have been hint enough. But it was the way Weasley pointed and stopped Potter to look through the windows of Quality Quidditch Supplies that solidified the amicability of their parting. He’d have never suspected a sundering of the marriage if not for the public statements given by the two parents themselves weeks earlier.

Potter made it look so easy. And he did it again the following year when he was seen with a companion at some Ministry function; not a woman, but a man. Draco had watched the two Potter boys carefully that year, intent on discerning how they felt about their father’s true preferences. But either they were excellent at hiding their feelings or there was nothing to see. The older son, James, continued to dally his way through Potions, barely sneaking by as usual. And the younger could have been top of the class that year if Draco actually acknowledged that sort of nonsense.

There was little to disconnect Potter from his children; Draco lived in the school too and heard the rumours over which his finicky students attempted such secrecy: Potter’s son James had detached himself from the family at age sixteen… Potter’s wife was hooked on Doxy venom supplements and slipping into deep depression… Potter’s other son had beat up a Sixth Year for calling them a family of queers… Potter’s daughter spent most of her time performing so zealously on her broomstick that there was no doubt she was trying to get herself carted off to St Mungo’s in a sheet. Draco saw very little physical evidence of any of it then, and as the years ticked by, little else surfaced. The rumours flagged a bit from disinterest. Draco’s son shot through his Arithmancy courses as if possessed, and his Charms sessions with delightful zeal. Astoria’s behavior grew more unbalanced and harder to predict, as it had been for the last couple years, and then one night, Draco found himself in the bed of a man he knew vaguely, wrapped around him and moaning into his open mouth, knowing he’d uncovered a secret of his own existence that he had never, ever been aware of.

After Draco’s night of confession, Scorpius’ grades plummeted spectacularly. His surliness made him a recluse by choice and by default: the other students in his house avoided speaking to him, working alongside him, and finally being around him altogether. Scorpius seemed to drink it in, snarling at everyone, even the other professors, until his detentions became a weekly occurrence. And as for his interactions with his father… Well, if not for their look-alike faces and silvery-blond hair, Draco would not have thought him the child he’d raised.

And yet, this, too, was part of raising Scorpius. Draco was ruining his own son.

* * *

For the first time in days, Granger’s voice was not cranky. “I’ve got it,” she cried, barrelling into the dungeon laboratory like the eleven-year-old she no longer was and carrying half the library with her. Draco just barely kept his grip on the phial of Rhictus Wyrm secretion he held. He leaned against the edge of his worktable, stoppering the phial and waving foul-smelling steam from in front of his eyes.

“Granger, if you insist upon leaping into my laboratory like a Muggle chipmunk, kindly wait until I’ve put away the more caustic ingredients of whatever I happen to be brewing. This,” he said and shoved the glowing pink phial in front of her nose, “tends to burn right through flesh if not tempered properly first.”

“I’m sorry, you’re right, I’m sorry.” She stepped back, struggling with the huge books clutched to her chest. She glanced behind her, and Draco followed her gaze to find Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom entering his laboratory as well.

“Oh,” Draco muttered. He slid the cauldron lid shut over the bubbling brew beneath, set the phial of venom down, and slumped onto his stool. “Joy.”

“I think I’ve found the spell combination we’ll need.” Granger veritably lunged forward again and set the stack of tomes down on his table, missing his potions equipment by inches. Draco gritted his teeth, and she smirked at him. “Oh, Malfoy. I wouldn’t dare break your precious glass stirring rods and phials. Not when I need them so much.”

“I shudder to think why.” Draco looked at Potter and found the other man watching him intently. The flames under his cauldron cast golden sparks into Potter’s eyes, lighting the thin ring of hazel hugging his irises. Draco jerked his gaze away.

“Because,” Granger stated, moving his potions paraphernalia carefully aside and tipping the topmost book open with a thump, “we’ll need you to brew a symbiosis solution.”

Draco stood slowly and bent over the book, eyeing the upside-down text. The penmanship was neat and obviously old; the edges of the page curled up slightly. He looked at Granger. “Complicated?”

“Absolutely.” Her grin was crafty and quite pleased with itself. Draco dropped his eyes back to the page and turned the book around with the fingers of one hand.

“Adder’s breath, sopophorous root, draught of Moondew Flower…” The list was extensive, rare, and titillating. “Binding sinews from three separate subspecies of Silas’ Widow Vine. Granger, do you have any idea how many of these ingredients are monitored by the Ministry Department of Potions Usage?”

“All but four,” she answered blithely. Her finger touched down on the paragraph explaining the final brewing process. “If I’m right, you’ll add powdered Moonstone and Jobberknoll feathers here—”

“The feathers will have to come first,” Draco interjected. He squinted at the text. “Fascinating.”

Granger’s grin widened. Draco glanced up and found Potter watching him with an anticipatory almost-smile on his face.

Draco straightened, flipping the long sleeves of his robes up over his forearms and crossing them over his chest. “Tell me about the spell combination,” he said curtly.

“It will centre around Pensieve memories,” she answered. “I couldn’t think of anything that would create the atmosphere we needed, and then McGonagall mentioned the wealth of stories she’s been collecting from the teachers and parents, and it was so obvious—We’ve got all we need right in our heads!” She tapped her temple with one finger and smiled at Potter. “Felt rather stupid, didn’t I?”

“You’re nowhere near stupid,” Potter said patiently. His gaze flicked to Draco, but Longbottom stepped between them and frowned down at the potions book.

“I can get you those.” He pointed to the Moondew Flower and three species of Silas’ Widow Vine. “I’ve permits to grow them. As long as they stay on school grounds, I can do whatever I like with them. As for the sopophorous root—”

“Mr Malfoy has a small portion of that in his stores, if I remember correctly?” It was McGonagall, coming down the steps through the doorway at a sedate pace, her hands folded into her robes. She nodded in return to Draco’s affirmation and surveyed the group. “All right, Ms Granger. Please continue, and I would like to hear how you plan to handle that trouble with settling the spell over the already existing magic here.”

“It’s quite tricky, actually,” Granger began. “The spell combination is designed to set the memories, or at least the emotions contained within them, directly into the base stones of the castle. From there, they will filter out little by little with the rest of the protective magic, like sifting through an hourglass. The atmosphere will change gradually over the first few hours until it sets, if you will. The symbiosis solution is to join the separate memories together into a constant… well, a river, you might say. If they remain separate, the re-creation will end up skipping about rather haphazardly. The emotional flow won’t be smooth.”

“Can’t imagine why the flow of wartime emotions should be choppy,” Draco said blandly. He was startled by Potter’s burst of laughter. It wasn’t loud at all, just sudden and brimming with mirth. He looked over and found the man grinning at him.

“That is an excellent point.” McGonagall squinted at Draco and then tapped her finger on the potions book to get Granger’s attention. “Perhaps you might do away with some of the emotional stability?”

“Certainly.” Granger flipped through another tome. This one was almost humming, harmonics that were barely there, vibrating on the air. A very old Arithmancy book, then. Draco was intrigued in spite of himself. His father had owned several books that hummed like that. It was soothing. Granger went page by page, turning the parchment carefully. Her brow furrowed. “Well, I think. It might mean adding an entirely new charm to the end. Or… Oh, Godric. Rewriting the order of the spells. This is going to be harder than I—”

“Blue-Eye Mushrooms,” Draco interrupted, and everyone looked at him. He raised his eyebrows. “Third ingredient.”

“Yes, of course!” Granger’s face was alight once more. She snapped her fingers and tugged the potions book her way again. “Yes, that will work! They’ll temper the effects of the sopophorous and—”

“They will act to induce mild discord between whatever is being bound into place by the potion,” Draco broke through. “Call it a gentle shiver. Whatever.”

“It’s really perfect,” Granger went on as if he’d not interrupted her mid-sentence. “It won’t affect any of the existing magic in the school, and I can even direct the spells at particular age groups, so that takes care of the younger students. The children that stay will be able to go about their business normally. We could ask Peckham to organise a Quidditch camp, or Dodgett could take them on field trips to Hogsmeade and the surrounding area, or some such activity for the week. But I’d like to keep notes on everything we do here. If this works and other schools wish to repeat the process, we’ll be able to provide them all the information they’ll need.”

“There will be plenty of time to get ahead of ourselves later,” McGonagall admonished. “First, I want to see all of these spells perfected and individually tested three times each, then three times in combination, and I will be present when all of this is done. As for the potion, how long do you estimate brewing time, Mr Malfoy?”

“A week. I’ll need a few days to decide on the most potent plant cuttings and measurements alone, a few more days to test various versions, and another day to brew the final solution.”

“Excellent,” McGonagall said, cutting off Granger’s sound of dismay. “Unfortunately, it may take a bit longer. I cannot supervise the brewing if I am assisting Ms Granger.”

Draco was set on stating that no supervision was required, thanks so very much, but Potter beat him to it.

“I’ll supervise,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Everyone looked at him. Draco did it through very narrow eyes. “Potter. You’ve never brewed a successful potion in your life.”

Potter opened his mouth in protest, but Draco continued, “By _yourself_.”

Granger’s expression was of amused agreement. Potter shut his mouth, looking indignant, then thoughtful, and finally, with a half-smile that Draco did not expect. He blinked, and Potter’s smile softened in an odd way. Then he turned to the others and Draco found himself a little short on air.

“I’ve got to catalogue what happens with the brewing process anyway,” Potter said. “The Ministry will want to know every single detail, and I’d hate for them to axe this because procedure wasn’t followed.”

“Then it’s settled. Mr Longbottom, if you will accompany Mr Malfoy to the greenhouses to select the cuttings he will need?”

Draco caught Potter’s eye and found himself being watched yet again.

* * *

Potter actually knocked before opening the door and hopping down the steps into the potions laboratory. He was clothed in comfortable-looking trousers and an oft-worn shirt, if the loose threads at the hem were any indication. He crossed the room in a few steps and leaned with both hands on Draco’s worktable, studying the cauldron as if he actually knew what he was looking at. “So. Where are you?”

Draco finished measuring out the last three drops of Moondew Flower draught without bothering to answer. When the mixture had sizzled up as expected and simmered into a shiny silver, Draco at last turned to Harry and glowered at him. “Version five. Third ingredient. I’ve kept copious notes, as I always do.” He pointed at the neat stack of parchment resting on the table under a low-level shielding charm. Potter’s eyes lingered on him as he reached over and picked up the pile.

“Hmm. ‘Yields explosive results.’ Very adventurous, your third version.”

“It’s the second Widow’s Vine,” Draco said gruffly. “Haven’t figured out the correct method of adding it yet.”

“The measurement’s wrong?” Potter’s brows came together curiously. Draco gave an exasperated sigh and wheeled on him.

“There are issues other than correct measurements when brewing potions,” he snapped. “Timing, for instance. The order of ingredients. Which you would know about if you’d ever actually made the effort to understand the craft.”

Potter eyed him balefully. Or Draco’s irritated mindset chose to interpret the look as baleful. He was uneasy about how he might interpret it if he actually made a good faith effort. Draco gestured at the small knife resting by his unwelcome supervisor’s arm and held out his hand. Potter picked up the knife, turning it handle-first to Draco. Draco took it and began to mince another sample of the first Widow’s Vine with swift, agitated slices.

Potter watched him, notes still in hand. “Think this one will work?”

“I expect not,” Draco answered flatly.

“Why not cut enough of the different vines for a couple more versions now? Save some time later. ”

Draco added the now-mushy bits of the vine gradually into the cauldron with his thumb and forefinger, glaring at Potter as he did. “Yet another example of your potions-related incompetence. Did I not mention the aspect of timing? Of preparing as well as adding ingredients, Potter.”

Contrary to the response Draco was hoping for, Potter just nodded thoughtfully and perused the notes he held. “Yes, you’ve been experimenting with that. The measurements of sopophorous root look good. Consistently the same results. Moondew… Still working on that, I see.”

Draco grabbed the second species of Widow’s Vine and began to slice the sample lengthwise, forming long, thin strips that curled at the ends as if the vine were still alive and trying to grasp onto his wrist. “Nothing wrong with the sopophorous,” he muttered. He set the strips aside, checked the height of the flames beneath the cauldron, and leaned back onto his stool to let the thing bubble. Potter continued reading, his eyes flicking intently over the pages. As the seconds ticked by without any verbal interruption, Draco’s nerves began to relax. He drew a quiet breath, trying to bring himself down from the edge on which he seemed to be teetering. Damn it all if he was going to allow Potter to work him up like this. Not while he was in _his_ element, and so far from Potter’s that it was comical.

At last, the other man looked up at him. “These are fantastic,” he stated.

Draco shrugged. “Better be.”

“Would you mind if I added your notes to the report I’ll be presenting to Shacklebolt?” Potter asked mildly. Draco fought the urge to grab the notes back. He shook his head instead.

“Take them. Don’t blame me if your notes look imbecilic in comparison.”

Potter, as it turned out, had taken extensive notes on all re-creation-related occurrences thus far, even following Draco and Longbottom to the greenhouses when they selected their cuttings. His absence from the beginning of the potions process probably had more to do with gathering information on Hermione’s progress than any stint of laziness, but Draco wasn’t about to admit it.

“I dropped in on Neville,” Potter said. “He should have fresh Moondew Flower down to you within two hours. The mid-evening blossoms are just blooming. And Hermione’s first set of spells are combining well so far.”

“And now you’re here,” Draco said darkly. “I take no responsibility for what may befall you as a result of your insistence on being present.”

“Good enough.” The smile Potter gave Draco was tentative, but definitely there. He reached sideways and pulled another stool to the edge of the table, then folded himself onto it, feet propped on the lower rungs, knees apart. “Now. Tell me how you’re doing.”

Draco picked up the distillation of Jobberknoll feathers he’d prepared much earlier and shook its separated components back together again. “No.”

“You’re not happy,” Potter said in a blunt tone that made Draco’s fingers clench until he was afraid claws would erupt from under his nails and tear his palms wide open. “Even Albus has commented.”

Draco turned slowly to glare at him. “I hope to Salazar,” he said quietly, “that you have not informed him of my situation.”

“I don’t even know what your situation is, Draco. You won’t tell me.” Potter never flinched, _damn_ the man. He never backed away, never kept his feet out of other people’s ponds, and he never took the first answer as the last answer when it wasn’t the one he wanted to hear.

Draco set the Jobberknoll distillation down with a sharp clink and leaned over the table. Steam from the cauldron sucked at his chin and cheeks. “I’m just splendid, Potter. We’re all getting along smashingly well. Didn’t you come to the renewal of our vows?”

Something almost sad came into Potter’s eyes. “She did move out, then.”

Draco stood up straight, unable to remain so close. “Reading the tabloids again, Potter?”

The answer came, and it was nowhere near the level of agitation that Draco felt. “My son has.”

Draco pressed his lips together, wondering just how white they were and how much that whiteness was drawing his unwanted companion’s attention. “Well. My son’s not bloody well speaking to me. At least you’ve got some idea what yours has been doing this past year!”

The outburst was sudden and left Draco a little winded. He scowled rigidly at his potion and the ingredients waiting to go in. But he was having trouble really registering what he was looking at. All he could pay attention to was the soft sound of Harry Potter’s breathing, audible over the gently seething brew. The memory of the man’s scent crept over him in a spicy whiff and for a second Draco wasn’t sure if he was remembering or if he was actually smelling Harry again.

His stomach ached keenly.

Potter’s next movement startled Draco: Harry leaned forward until his forearms rested on the worktable. His right hand was inches away from Draco’s left. Draco looked at the tanned curve of Harry’s fingers, and when Harry actually spoke, Draco shuddered.

“You think he’s into something dangerous?” Harry asked.

Draco shook his head. Forced himself to meet the other man’s gaze for a moment at least. “No. Not… No, I’d have noticed. Hells, someone would have noticed. They all see it. What we’re like with each other.”

What was he saying? And by all the gods, why was it coming out in the presence of bloody Harry Potter? Draco barely felt as if he were the one speaking the words, it was so strange. But _what_ he was saying, that was different. The truth was, he remembered this tension, but he would never say why aloud to Potter.

Being around Scorpius these days felt like being around his father, years ago when he’d been a boy.

Harry’s hand still rested where it had been, inches from his own.

“Has he wanted to see his mother?”

Draco at last found the angry energy he was desperate for. “Wanted to?” he snapped. He grabbed his wand and flicked it harshly at the cauldron, dousing the fire. “It wouldn’t matter what he wanted to do, even if I did know what he’s thinking. She won’t see _him_.”

Potter blinked. “What?”

Draco glowered at him across the top of the cauldron. “Did you not notice the psychoses that night, Potter? She’s utterly unpredictable.”

Potter frowned at that, but didn’t respond. And Draco was done talking about it anyway. He felt humiliated enough just knowing what Potter knew about the background of the entire thing.

With another flick of his wrist, he cooled the still-swirling mixture. As soon as it stopped moving, he picked up the first strip of the second Silas’ Widow Vine and slipped it as gently as he could over the lip of the cauldron and into the potion. He’d got quite good at it; no ripples at all now, and that, he suspected, was the key, or part of it. It took him several seconds to realise that Potter had leaned closer and was watching his progress from just over his shoulder.

“Potter! If you please?”

“How many do you have to add?” Potter asked. Draco fought the desire to smack Potter over the head with the Jobberknoll vial. Right across the scar ought to do it.

“You know damn well how many I have to add,” he hissed, picking up the second strip of vine. “You’ve only been bloody well memorising my bloody notes for the past ten bloody minutes!”

Potter drew back and eyed him. “You get less creative as you get more frustrated, Draco.”

“You have no _bloody_ idea.” Draco sneered, and for an instant he caught what might have been an answering smirk. But Potter only leaned back into the cauldron’s, and Draco’s, personal space to watch him add the next ingredient. Draco did it with aplomb, despite the presence of certain annoyances, and then turned on Harry. “Look, I’ve no problem with you recording this enchanting experience. But you’re dangerously close to being tossed into the cauldron after the Widow Vine, _if_ I get it right this time, which I won’t! It takes time, Potter. Time, and effort, and lots and lots of utter monotony! So why don’t you go find a house-elf to fix us an upper-class lunch like the ones I’m used to and I’ll call you when I finally move past this damned step!”

“Which you will,” Potter said serenely. He didn’t get up. Draco snatched the next root from the table, straightened it between his fingers, and slipped it into the cauldron all in one flourish. Potter’s eyebrows rose. “That was impressive.”

“You’re right,” Draco snarled, “it was. It’s the first time I’ve made it past the third piece with a cauldron that’s still intact.”

“Congratulations.” Potter was now grinning cheekily, of all things. “And now it sits for thirty minutes?”

“No. It receives the final strip, and _then_ it sits for thirty minutes, and I damn well want to be eating during that half hour, Potter.” Draco lifted the fourth and final bit of the vine, and delicately added it to the now-merrily-glowing potion. It went in without fuss, and Potter started talking again.

“You’re right, you know.”

“What?” Draco said crossly, watching the potion for any signs of upset.

“I’m pants at potions. It’s marvellous to watch someone who’s truly gifted while he’s developing a new one. Well, someone who hasn’t decided I’m the most pathetic species of pond algae, at least.”

“Potter.” The potion had begun rippling rather alarmingly, sparking fiercely to an acidic yellow. “Move.”

“Amazing. I was sure you’d assure me that I _was_ pond algae. Probably still am.”

“Potter—”

“Figured if I made a real effort, you might start to come arou—”

 _“Harry,”_ Draco snapped, “get down!”

“What?”

The potion let out a high-pitched whine and Draco grabbed for Harry’s arm, wrapping his fingers around the fabric of his sleeve and yanking downward as hard as he could. The first piercing shrieks sounded as he dove to the ground over the other man, crying out the words to a shielding spell. The shield went up just as the cauldron exploded, shooting burning pieces of shrapnel in every direction. Several smacked off Draco’s shield, sizzling, and the potion slopped over the edges of the table and burned a deep, circular hole through the stone beneath it before the liquid turned ashen and went dormant.

The room grew quiet again. Draco became aware of Harry’s breathing and looked down to find the other man looking up at him.

“Thanks,” Harry said.

Draco didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then he pushed himself off of Harry and terminated the shielding spell. “The next time that happens,” he rasped, “if you aren’t paying attention, I’m throwing you out of here, Ministry or no Ministry.”

He turned away as Harry got to his feet, but not in time to avoid the quirked smile on the other’s face.

* * *

Granger’s multitude of tests over the following week went swimmingly, as it turned out. Aside from a few small setbacks and requests for the assistance of both Eleanora and Jerilynn Dodgett, the spry Charms instructor, in refining the fit of one spell to another, McGonagall had nothing but satisfactory news to report about Granger’s manic progress. Once her help was no longer required, Eleanora put together a carefully-worded permission scroll to be approved by the Headmistress. With Draco’s potion at last safely tested, tempered, and waiting within his locked chambers, all that remained was for Harry Potter to take their plan to those higher than him in the Ministry and convince them to let it go forward.

And that ended up taking five additional days. Oddly, Potter returned to the school every night, often quite late, looking tired enough to drop down right across his dinner plate in the Great Hall. Sometimes he would depart in the morning with Granger or Longbottom at his side, leaving through the front doors just as Draco was coming up from the dungeons for breakfast. Potter’s invitation for Draco to accompany him as well had been declined; Draco stated that his presence where the bigwigs could all see and remember him would likely hack the legs right out from under the entire project and hurl it bodily into the fires of the Muggle underworld to burn in agonising pain for all eternity.

Potter raised his eyebrows several times during that particular statement, though he didn’t argue, for which Draco was thankful.

But, as always, it was no surprise when Potter got his way. Draco knew the result the moment the man entered the Great Hall on the fifth night, after the last student had finally stumbled off in the direction of bed. As usual, Granger and Longbottom were waiting up for their friend and any news he might bring on the proceedings, sharing a pot of strong mint tea a few seats down from Draco. As for Draco himself, he couldn’t really explain why he’d chosen this table on which to lay out his most recent essays. The tea was a strong contender for why he’d stayed, at least; Granger brought him a mug full of the sweetened brew seconds after they received it, and then left him to his marking. Draco drew a long draught of the fragrant tea and frowned down at a fifth-year Ravenclaw’s paper, hashing through a spelling error with an unsubtle gash of red ink.

They heard the outer door open before footsteps came up the first stairwell. Granger and Longbottom stopped talking and craned their heads toward the hall’s doors. Draco set his tea cup down and began composing a sharp comment in the margins of the paper’s third paragraph, detailing the impossibility of combining Sorcha Weed with Essence of Jobberknoll by reason of subsequent violent explosions. _Interesting hypothesis— except that you’d be dead before you could record the result in any credible potions archive. Please refrain from attempting such an insane combination of ingredients in my—_

The door to the Great Hall groaned open and Harry Potter stepped through. He looked exhausted and absolutely cheerful, and that was when Draco knew. Potter leaned wearily against the door’s molding, and something in the lean angle of his body made Draco feel the need to clear his throat.

“We’ve got it,” Potter said from across the hall. Granger gave a little squeal and jumped up from her chair, rushing around the instructors’ table to meet her friend as he made his way up the row toward them. Longbottom rose more sedately, and then waited his turn to clap Potter on the back and demand to know what it was he’d said and to whom. Draco watched all of it from his seat, quill poised over his ink pot, and gained knowledge of “Shacklebolt’s involvement” and “younger Wizengamot than usual.” The fact that a meeting of the wizarding court of judgment was required made Draco’s muscles tense up. This was serious indeed, and they were taking it seriously back in London.

Potter looked Draco’s way several times as he related the events of his final visit to the Ministry. Each time, Draco had to physically force himself not to turn away.

“They’ll send up a small contingent of Aurors the day we’re to cast the initial spells. We’ve got a week and a half to finalise everything with the students’ families and iron out a relatively small list of kinks the Wizengamot has discovered. Shouldn’t be an issue. Minerva alone can handle them.”

At last, Granger’s incessant questions ceased and Potter’s head swivelled once more in Draco’s direction. He looked at Draco for so long that the other two followed his gaze, and then Draco had to think of something cogent to say.

“Congratulations, Potter,” he intoned mildly. Took a second to lay his quill carefully down on the table, and then looked up again. “Another victory in the name of righteous people everywhere.”

“Oh, don’t even listen to him,” Granger said, grinning. “He’s looking forward to this just as much as we are. Maybe more. He’s been down here all night waiting to hear.”

A smile pulled at Potter’s mouth. His eyelids dipped and Draco noticed full, dark lashes. “Your notes tipped them over. The head of the Potions Usage department called them ‘exquisite.’”

“Did she.”

Potter nodded, and Granger gave a happy laugh and grabbed her friend’s hand. Longbottom said something to her and she answered back, but Draco didn’t recall what they said.

* * *

The letters explaining the proposal were sent out the following day, and then the permission scrolls came flooding back with one answer or another. The re-creation became the subject of every classroom conversation Draco spelled into silence, every bit of chatter he overheard when he happened to be in the vicinity of a horde of students. The Third Years had whinged at first; that had lasted one bloody minute in his classroom, and resulted in the reduction of one hundred and thirty two points total from the collective houses.

True to Ministry form, a posse of Aurors arrived within a few days of Potter’s victory. The idea to put them up on the lawn was discussed and dismissed; if something happened in the castle, ‘what good would they be out milling about on the Quidditch pitch?’ as Granger so quaintly worded it. Ravenclaw’s new spaciousness provided plenty of room to set up house, and it had the added bonus of keeping the Ministry’s lackeys about as far away from Draco as they could get. They proved to be a mixed group, smaller than he’d expected: the great and powerful Shacklebolt did not come along for the adventure, but instead sent four of the senior Aurors just under Potter. Two of them looked to be in their forties. One was an elderly woman with sharp eyes, and the other was a surprisingly young man who talked about the project so knowledgeably that Draco wondered if he’d actually been lurking around the castle for the past few weeks.

Of course, they all had much to say. Granger walked them thoroughly through every step and twice as many rooms in the castle, pointing out what would be directly affected, letting them question the older students as to their personal feelings on the matter, and shooting down their concerns one at a time. Draco kept himself out of the way until the elderly Auror arrived in his laboratory to inspect the finished potion; she eventually went away with a nod and a simple “Very inventive.” After that, Draco avoided the Aurors and allowed the others to inform him of their progress: they were setting aside all of the Astronomy tower and the new Charms wing for the younger students who would remain at the castle over holiday, and they were going through each permission scroll with painstaking attention to parental signature… even though Eleanora swore up and down that she’d charmed the parchment to turn a violent orange with blue speckles should a student attempt any sort of forgery.

For the most part, it seemed the older students were sticking around for the re-creation exercise. More than a few parents of the younger students swept in muttering and out again with their children in tow, though why the train ride back to King’s Cross was no longer a viable option for them was a mystery to Draco. Four professors were put in charge of the First, Second, and Third Years, while the rest were settled into slightly different scheduling for the older classes. The entire endeavour was proving to be quite a bit smaller than Granger had first volleyed for, but the core theme was still present and going strong.

Draco signed Scorpius’ permission scroll on the last evening, and then gave himself a moment to sit and gather his resources before informing his son.

He found Scorpius in the Great Hall, leaning his lanky body moodily over the Gryffindor table on folded arms. His eyes were closed and his long hawthorn wand was pressed to his temple, no doubt the cause of the faintly pulsing beat to which his head bobbed.

“Scorpius,” Draco said. His son’s eyes opened very slowly and rolled up to peer at him.

“Dad,” Scorpius said.

His stare was too bald, a little too grey, and definitely too cool for Draco’s liking. He could always, always see Astoria in his son’s eyes these days, and that was a feat because Astoria’s eyes were brown. The downward slope to the inner corners of Scorpius’ eyes were hers, however, and there seemed to be more power in that similarity than all the blond hair, slanting eyebrows, and pointed noses of the Malfoys.

Draco handed Scorpius the permission scroll, and Scorpius reached out and took it. Speaking was no longer their trouble; neither was childish behavior. It was everything in between, emotions that should have been there when Scorpius spoke to Draco, the stiffness that had replaced them and forced itself into every limb of his son’s body… It was all underneath, but Draco could see it— and feel it— plain as sunlight.

Scorpius nudged the curling edge of the scroll down with one forefinger and read the page. Draco knew he’d finished when he blinked. “Why?” he asked. The word was flat and weightless, just there, much the way Scorpius was ‘just there’ these days. He wasn’t looking at Draco, still staring passively at the scroll.

“It will be instructive,” Draco answered. “More instructive than any historical tosh Binns could teach you about the wars.”

Just like that, Scorpius’ face hardened in that familiar way that Draco dreaded every day. He passed the scroll back and followed it with a narrowed stare. “Don’t you think I’ve been taught enough about the wars?”

So much bitterness there. It wasn’t all directed at Draco, but much of it was. The world bore the brunt of the rest, and Draco knew even that remainder was considerable.

“You may have been taught,” he answered thinly. “But you haven’t _learned_ what the war was.”

His son’s stony face would have been enough to turn him from the table if he had not already decided on going. Draco left the scroll in Scorpius’ hand and strode down the aisle to the doors. He would take his lunch in his own quarters today, where he had time to compose himself for instructing giggly and incompetent Third Years in the early afternoon.

* * *

It wasn’t the best idea to take his leisure with three fingers of Scotch on this particular evening, and Draco knew that. He was an intelligent adult, after all. But there were some things that required fortification, no matter how old and wise a person pretended to be.

“In my defence,” Draco muttered, staring at the amount of golden liquid in his glass, “it’s only one drink.”

The knock on his chamber door was enough to startle said drink nearly from his hand. Draco grabbed onto the glass, Scotch sloshing over his fingers. Salazar, even Scorpius’ knock was harsh and argumentative. Draco cleared his throat and sent a cleaning spell over his shirt and vest, then banished the glass and alcohol into the safety of the room’s heavy wooden cabinets. He ran both hands through his hair, dispelling the last shiver of panic thrumming through him, and went to the door.

Scorpius stood on the other side, hands jammed into his pockets, face twisted into a distasteful scowl. His upper body was framed in sharp relief by a fitted black shirt, his bottom half swimming in Muggle jeans that were much too large. Draco fought the frown that threatened and stepped back, nodding his son into the room. Scorpius strode in without looking at him and Draco shut the door slowly.

He turned to find his son’s cool countenance fixed on him, an unconcerned turn of his head while the rest of him remained facing the inner room. For a moment, all Draco could do was stare back, and then Scorpius spoke up.

“You wanted me here?”

Draco gestured toward the chairs. “Have a seat.”

Scorpius sat immediately, both hands settled on their respective armrests. His entire frame contained an unmasked rigidity. Draco’s stomach churned; he was suddenly very thankful for the bit of alcohol he’d allowed himself. He crossed the room in silence and chose the chair directly across from his son. He had pumpkin juice in his cabinets— a personal favourite— but he’d learned months ago that there was little sense in offering it, or anything else, to Scorpius. The boy always interpreted it as some sort of bribery and responded in sneering kind. Eventually Scorpius would get up and get it for himself if he wanted it.

“The re-creation begins tomorrow,” Draco said, foregoing any preamble, “and we need to talk.”

Scorpius didn’t answer. His expression didn’t change, so Draco took it as a sign to continue. “There are going to be some very significant changes once the incantations take effect. I realise you and your schoolmates have been warned of this in various classes, but I doubt any of you are truly ready for what you will experience.”

“Why wouldn’t you think we’d be ready?” Scorpius said. His tone was just the right side of sullen.

“Because none of us were,” Draco answered. Something changed in Scorpius’ eyes; perhaps they widened just for a moment. Draco drew another breath. “But I want you to be as prepared as you can be,” he finished quietly.

Scorpius’ jaw worked. He watched Draco for several seconds and then nodded. “All right.”

Some of Draco’s muscles relaxed. He leaned back into the chair. “Things will feel darker. It’s not something easily explained. You almost have to experience it for yourself, and I believe Professor Granger is right in that you should. Your luxury is that you will not need to encounter the… more physical pain that comes with it. The war—”

“War’s over, Dad.” Scorpius’ brow had lowered again.

Draco sighed. Somewhere in the castle, Granger was having an early and glorious sleep full of dreams of personal satisfaction and successful, award-winning academic achievements. Even having matriculated, she couldn’t stop making waves. And Potter was no doubt spending a much more enjoyable hour with his son and daughter, who were most likely not looking at him like he was a prime example of Skrewt dung.

“For the next week, it won’t be over.” Draco stood up, unable to keep from fidgeting, and began to move about the room. “Tensions will be much higher. It will be difficult for everyone to function as normal. People will not be in the best control of their faculties.”

“Yeah, tension can be a bitch.”

Draco looked at his son sharply and Scorpius glared right back. Draco’s irritation took a much firmer hold than he wanted. “And what exactly do you think is going to happen, Scorpius? An enjoyable school project? A waste of your perfectly good holiday?”

For an instant, Draco thought Scorpius was going to shout at him. His son dropped his eyes instead. Draco clenched his teeth. “It won’t be an enjoyable project. It will be hard to get through, and it will be more than a little nightmarish. You’re going to hear things you aren’t prepared to hear, feel emotions you aren’t ready for. I suspect some of the students will end up making it even harder for others.”

“Because some of us are the kids of Death Eaters?” Scorpius said suddenly. His anger was palpable; Draco hadn’t seen its approach, and now it startled him into momentary silence.

“Because some of the students will not deal with what’s happening as well as others,” was his final, stilted answer.

Scorpius said nothing.

“Scorpius,” Draco sighed, coming to a stop behind the chair he’d vacated. “I think it’s important to learn what happened during the war. What drove people, what motivated them to do what they did… or didn’t do. You have to know, because it’s the only way to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. Things happened that a lot of us can’t forget. They shaped who we all are, and I believe it will benefit you and your classmates to understand how it all came about.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea what motivates you,” Scorpius muttered. His eyes were fixed on one of his hands were it gripped the armrest.

“I’m sorry?” Draco said tightly.

Scorpius’ head rose. The fury that had been brewing had gone chillingly cold in his son’s eyes. Scorpius got up from the chair with a stiffness that made Draco’s mouth go dry.

“If this is where I find out why you’re such a bastard,” Scorpius snarled, “then I think I can do without.”

 _“Scorpius.”_ It was all Draco could do not to yell at his son. His own anger was bubbling up, but there was a barrier between it and explosion, a barrier that clenched his heart and his guts, and felt sickeningly like guilt. “I am your father. You will not address me in this manner.”

“So it’s all right for you to fuck everything up, but I don’t get to do the same?” Scorpius cried. His cheeks had gone bright red and his fists were clenched so tightly his hands had turned white. “Merlin, that’s _just_ like you! You are such a hypocritical liar—”

“Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy!”

His son’s mouth clamped shut; the snap of his teeth was audible. But he was still breathing hard, his body was still shaking. “You ruined her life,” he managed.

Draco felt his muscles go slack. “What?”

 _“Mum’s!”_ Scorpius shouted. “You fucked everything up. You didn’t care what it would do to her, or me, all you thought about was _him_ , what _he_ was like! Oh, you were so scarred by the bloody war—” the sarcasm flooded in a rasp from Scorpius’ mouth, “couldn’t even behave like a father or a married man—”

Draco lunged forward and grabbed his son by the shoulder, hard. _“That is enough!”_

Scorpius’ throat worked, but the rebellion in his eyes did not fade. He yanked himself out of Draco’s grasp. “She’d never have left me if it weren’t for you,” he whispered accusingly. “She’d still be here.”

And then he strode across the room, yanked the door open, and slammed it behind him.

Draco stood shaking in the middle of his sitting room, hearing his son’s last hissed words resonating much louder than anything they’d shouted at each other.

* * *

He didn’t see Scorpius at breakfast. The Gryffindor table was full of excited chattering, the upper class students with their heads bent together, the remaining younger ones watching their older counterparts with interested eyes and posing curious questions. Albus Potter sat with one of his dorm-mates, both eating silently. Harry Potter had taken his breakfast at the professors’ table and was now contemplating his goblet of water with a vague frown on his face. Once, Potter’s eyes moved upward and caught Draco’s; after that, Draco kept his eyes on his own plate. When he finally finished, he left the Great Hall and returned to the dungeons to retrieve the appropriate vials for the approaching spell, and to try not to think.

* * *

In the end, three of them stood in the cold, dripping vault far beneath the Slytherin dormitories.

“All right,” Granger said in that practical tone of hers. “McGonagall has the students on stand-by for any trouble… and we’ve got everything, haven’t we?”

“You tell us, Hermione,” Potter said pleasantly. Draco looked at him and saw a patient but anticipatory smile on his face. Draco couldn’t exactly blame him. When Granger really got going, she was something to behold, even he could admit that.

And there was something rather… nostalgic about all of this. Almost like being in school again, bent over a cauldron waiting for the contents to either come together or explode. He’d just never found himself preferring the cohesion option while bent over a cauldron next to the likes of Granger and Potter.

Draco would have snickered, had he been younger.

Granger had already flipped through her pile to the proper set of ancient scrolls and was unrolling them carefully. The parchment cricked and cracked as she eased it flat and cast a gentle stabilising charm. “We’ll have to discontinue this spell before we begin. I’ve no idea what effect another form of magic will have on the older incantations.”

Potter nodded and leaned forward to get a better look. Draco joined him.

“The Pensieve is right there.” Granger pointed at the large stone basin standing upright in the centre of the chamber. They’d chosen the location for its central position deep in the foundations of the castle; the oldest stone was here, McGonagall had said. Granger pulled a tiny flask out of her pocket and resized it to its normal shape. “And I’ve got the memories from everyone. Quite a few more than I expected. Neville and Minerva did a good job.”

“Any chance we won’t be getting these particular memories back?” Potter joked, but Draco did not smile. He’d been wondering, almost hoping, the same thing. There were images he’d taken out of his head quite gratefully over the last week, images he wasn’t sure he wanted, or needed, returned.

Granger sighed melodramatically and poked her wand against the back of Potter’s head. “Alas. You’ll get them back as soon as we finish the spell. Their essence is what we’re interested in, the emotions involved in them. In a way, everyone will be able to feel what you were feeling even if they don’t know specifics.”

“Good,” Draco muttered, pulling his wand from his robes. Potter glanced at him and followed suit.

“Let’s just go over everything once more,” Granger said. “Once we begin, we’ll have exactly three minutes to complete the incantation or we’ll have to start over. Three’s sort of the magic number in this case; three minutes, three hours for the spell to set, and three of us. So, Harry, if you could cast a Tempus when we get started…”

“Sure.”

“We’ll need a count down from three each time we add a single memory. Draco,” Granger went on, turning to him, “I’ll need your help adding the memories to the Pensieve. They have to go in one at a time or they’ll get all muddled together. The emotions won’t be as cleanly formed later; we might end up with an unbearable amount of tension slung onto the school all at once instead of stretched out over the course of the week, or the combined fear could cause a panic, that sort of thing. Each time a memory is added, the person who added it says, ‘Memori unanimis’, and then we have three seconds—”

“Surprise, surprise,” Draco murmured, and Potter snorted.

“— _three seconds_ until we can add the next memory. And we’ll go like that until they’re all in the Pensieve.”

“How many memories are there?” Draco asked.

“There are twenty-six distinct memories from eleven different people. After we’re finished, the two of us have to say ‘Praesentia effusio’ together over the Pensieve. Then Draco adds the symbiosis solution— you’ve got it?”

Draco lifted the small phial from his pocket without a word. Granger smiled.

“Excellent. And then… well, I’ve brought a knife for this one. I think cutting spells run the risk of going awry.” She took out a small Muggle device with a simple grey handle, clicked the blade half an inch out, and walked over to set it carefully on the floor by the base of the Pensieve. Brushing her hands off, she returned to them and tapped the scroll with her finger. “After the solution, we’ve each got to add some of our own blood.”

“Let me guess: three drops.” Potter wasn’t exactly grinning. His smile seemed to be battling with similar sobering emotions to the ones that were whirling through Draco’s head.

Granger nodded briskly. “Yes. I’ve enchanted the knife to clean itself after each use. I’ll go first, since I’m the one who will be setting the spell. Then Draco, as the creator of the solution. Then you, Harry. We’ve also all given the most memories to the collection, so we’re the best ones to fix the magic. Our blood will make the re-creation that much stronger.”

“And the possible detrimental effects are?” Draco interrupted. He could see the frown on Potter’s face. They’d all read enough about blood magic to know how tricky it was, how likely to go wrong, and how unforgivably binding it was to those whose blood was used.

Granger did not hesitate. “We may experience any number of things, from being overloaded by every memory at once to being physically trapped in this room.”

“Lovely,” Draco muttered. This time, Potter’s laugh was unmistakable.

“We may experience dizziness, a sharing of emotions between the three of us, or if things really go wrong, the spell could attach itself to one of us and absorb too much blood. That’s why I’ve triple-checked and memorised every word I will be speaking, why Draco was up for three days testing the solution, and why, you, Harry, will be standing slightly farther back keeping time, and the last to add blood. You’re the only one of us with adequate wandless magic; we need you uninvolved and free to act for as long as possible. I’ve told the Headmistress and the Aurors exactly what to expect if everything goes right, as well as if anything goes wrong. Granted, we don’t know everything that could happen. No one’s performed this combination of spells before on such a large scale.”

The room was silent for a long moment, and then Potter’s voice broke it gently. “We trust you, Hermione.”

Draco nodded and saw Granger’s expression relax a touch. She ended the stabilising spell on the parchment and pocketed the lot, then stepped toward the edge of the Pensieve and opened the flask she held. The contents swirled, grey and tide-like. Draco moved until he stood directly across from her and placed his hand under the outstretched flask, cupping Granger’s. His fellow professor took a deep breath, let it out, and gave him a flash of a smile.

“All right. Shall we get started, then? Harry, if you please…”

Potter waved his wand in a sweeping arc, the fall of it dropping into a series of precise and steady taps. “Tempus,” he intoned. Granger immediately began to speak.

It was a mix of Latin and ancient Syrian; Draco recognised the lilt of syllables from many of the oldest Potions tomes in the school’s vaults. She recited the words clearly and unhurriedly; ‘Hogwarts’ leaped into relief each time she said it, as well as the full name of each Founder. Granger then uttered a low “Incante,” and nodded to him silently, dipping her wand into the flask. A thin strand of milky light rose out on the tip of her wand; Granger moved it carefully over the Pensieve’s rim and released it. “Memori unanimis.”

“Three. Two. One,” Potter’s voice came from Draco’s left.

Draco dipped his wand and retrieved another silky strand, then released it into the bowl. “Memori unanimis,” he said.

“Three. Two. One.”

Granger repeated the action, her higher voice echoing the same word, Potter counted, and Draco took his turn. One after another, the memories floated through the air and dropped silently into the growing swirl of silver light. Draco felt a vague twitch of sadness with one, anxiety with another, happiness with a third. By the time they had reached the high teens, their additions were seeping palpable amazement and incredulity into the air, deepening sorrow… the inklings of stuttering terror. Loss. Tension, above all. Draco could feel his heart beating hard, and struggled to focus on Potter’s count.

Finally, all twenty-six memories were in the Pensieve and the flask was empty. Granger locked eyes with Draco, wet her lips, and opened her mouth. Draco did the same.

“Praesentia effusio,” they said together.

Draco released the flask into Granger’s grip and leaned forward, uncorking his phial and tipping it into the Pensieve. The dark liquid seemed to float above the memories for several seconds, and then suddenly it seethed wildly, flashing electric blue light up to the ceiling. Bubbles formed all around the edges of the mixture and the memories began to glow faintly white.

For an instant, Draco thought he was grinding his teeth with the tension. And then he realised that the floor itself— or something deeper— was actually vibrating. It was very slight, but a low hum had started up, creeping into his awareness gradually as the blue-white light flickered over the walls. Granger swayed and Draco knew she felt it, but she kept her eyes fixed to the Pensieve’s contents. There came a hiss stronger than anything thus far, and the seething mass dipped into a rhythmic, pulsing whorl.

The grinding grew louder.

For a second, nobody moved. Then Granger motioned Potter forward and bent to retrieve the blade from the floor. She ran the tip of the knife over her little finger, her face twisting as her skin parted. Draco saw her swallow as she extended her hand over the lip of the bowl. Using her other hand, she kneaded her pinky finger firmly. One, two, three drops fell, and she snatched her hand away, tucking it into a pocket of her robes. She passed the knife to Draco; he watched as the tip cleared of blood, shining gold and dulling once more.

He cut his own finger quickly, a small slice just in the middle of the pad, and extended it over the Pensieve. One drop fell… two… and three. Draco turned his hand upward and drew it back, feeling the blood drip down his finger.

He hadn’t thought to watch what happened to Granger’s blood, but he blinked as his own swirled amongst the blue and white, and then twisted into black, writhing tendrils that snaked out from the centre to the sides and vanished. By now the grinding was a physical trembling, a small earthquake. Wordlessly, Draco held the knife out to Potter.

Potter took it without ceremony. He stepped the rest of the way forward, his shoulder nearly touching Draco’s where they stood. He made one firm cut against the tip of his little finger. Blood began to well, shining silver in the weird light. Potter held out his hand and let three drops fall, then drew back just as steadily and lowered his arm to his side. His Tempus spell ticked on in the air behind him, and Potter looked at the shimmering numbers for a few seconds before beginning the final count.

“Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

A loud snap split the air and all three of them leaped back from the Pensieve. Draco could swear he heard voices echo off the walls, a scream… the sound of a spoken name… laughter. The room rolled and Draco’s stomach heaved. He flung an arm out, found the cold floor stones, and felt another hand close around his shoulder. He just had time enough to acknowledge that it was Potter’s hand when his left arm burst into hot pain. Draco hissed and grabbed hold of his wrist. The room shuddered— the whole castle might have shuddered. Something rose up out of the Pensieve in a voluminous silvery flood, and then the room went absolutely black. Just as suddenly as the pain had started, it ceased, as did all the noise. The grinding vibrated through his innards sickeningly for several seconds, and then it was gone, and silence enveloped them.

Draco could hear nothing but his own rapid breathing. It felt like he was alone in the room, in the blackness. The skin of his left arm tingled. Draco tried to swallow with a too-dry throat.

“Are you— Is everyone all right?” That was Granger, her voice a tiny whisper from somewhere to his right.

The Pensieve began to glow. A translucent blue wave slid up and over the lip, flowing down the sides like water and spreading across the floor. Draco saw Harry as it rippled under him; the man’s silhouette was black against the liquid light. It flowed up the walls, tendrils threading over each stone, until the entire room was the deep, resonating indigo of a river in moonlight. White cascaded with the blue; whispers licked through the room, dozens of voices all too low to comprehend.

The walls, ceiling, and floor flickered like flowing water. Draco inhaled slowly.

“Are you both all right?” Granger said in a slightly panicked voice. Draco dragged his gaze away from the beauty before him and tried to find her. He could see her getting to her feet, her form reflected into water-shadowed relief. She was taking in the walls and ceiling with wide eyes.

“I’m all right,” Harry said to Draco’s left. The scrape of a shoe echoed over the whispering voices. “Draco?”

“Here.” He did not get up, and he heard Harry making his way toward him. The whispers danced about each other in his ears, almost recognisable.

“What is that, Hermione?” Harry said from just behind Draco.

“It’s the memories, I expect.” She sounded awed, and also puzzled. “Goodness, I had no idea they would take audible form so quickly. I could hear them, earlier, I mean. But this… Did you both hear them during the spell, too?”

“I heard them,” Harry said.

Draco frowned. He stared down at his arm, the pale skin of his inner wrist flickering under the light’s pulse. He could see the faint Mark snaking its way through the ripples, but they undulated in such a way that the black tattoo was nearly invisible.

“What is it?”

Draco jumped; he hadn’t heard Harry crouch down beside him, but there he was, a mere foot away, gazing at him intently.

Draco blinked and cleared his throat. “Either of you feel pain?”

“Pain? No, I don’t think so.” Granger’s footsteps resounded as she came closer. “What kind of pain?”

Draco scowled down at his arm. “My forearm,” was all he said.

Harry looked down as well. One of his fingers came out and traced the faint line of the Mark from an inch above Draco’s skin. Draco shivered.

“Well,” Granger said, crouching down as well, “you are the only one with the… with the Dark Mark. Perhaps it reacted to the spells in a particular way.”

“Yes, but why would it hurt?” Draco said, irritated and uneasy.

“I’m not sure. Is it hurting now?”

“…No.”

Granger’s head tilted in thought. Her hair shimmered silver-blue. “Wait, did you… Draco, did you give us the memory of when you actually received your Mark?”

Harry raised his head to look at his friend, but Draco kept himself from glancing at the other man. “Yes. I did,” he said flatly.

Granger nodded. “That might explain it. The sense-memory would be a part of the rest of it. You might have been feeling your own memory, almost like an echo.”

“Maybe,” Harry’s voice came lowly.

“Well, let’s get into better light, then. I’d like a look at it. See if anything about it has changed.”

* * *

Draco’s arm looked normal in the afternoon light streaming lazily into the entrance hall. The Mark twisted its way in a frozen curl up to his elbow as it always had; Draco could not help the inner wince as the other two scrutinised his arm, but at least the outward manifestation of the reaction had long ago been trained away.

“Nothing looks different,” he said bluntly. Harry scrutinised his arm for two seconds longer, a slight furrow to his brow, and then nodded and straightened. Granger did not release his wrist, however. She continued to stare at and smooth the skin of his forearm with her fingers, turning his limb gently this way and that. Her wand tapped another mild spell into his arm, again yielding no noticeable results.

“Hmm. You should probably go to Madam Levine anyway. Just to be sure.”

Draco finally succeeded in pulling his arm from her grasp. Granger pocketed her wand, and he saw the joyous smile of their success wind its way over her face unchecked. He rolled his eyes and stepped away from both of them.

McGonagall approached, her robes swishing at her feet. “Any problems?”

“None at all,” Granger said, and then proceeded to give her a second-by-second report of the enchantment process. McGonagall glanced at Draco when they addressed the curiosity of his arm and made his visit to Levine a directive rather than a suggestion. Then she returned her attention to her Transfiguration instructor.

“You do not foresee any issues arising, then?”

“There’s nothing I can think of,” Granger answered. “Granted, this is the first time we’ve done this. But the spell took well, and firmly. Harry’s warded off the entire room and stairwell above it. As long as the Pensieve remains undisturbed, there shouldn’t be any difficulties.”

“All right, then.” McGonagall turned from all of them and lifted her wand to her throat, invoking the Sonorus spell.

“Attention, professors and students.” Her voice boomed richly into every corner of the room and, most likely, every corner of the castle. “Our magical business has been successfully concluded. Everyone may now exit their dormitories and continue their lessons as normally scheduled. If anyone has concerns that need my attention, please feel free to come and see me in my office this afternoon.”

She ended the spell and gave a great sigh. “Well,” she said, raising her eyebrow. “I assume I will now be assured of a busy day. If you will excuse me.”

She headed up the stairs toward the higher floors. Draco watched her go and then looked around at what felt like an expectant silence. The other two were staring at him.

“What?”

“I asked if you wanted to share a celebratory drink,” Harry said, a smile curving his mouth. Draco stared at his lips for a long second and then shook his head.

“I’ve work to do. But please, take Granger. I believe she could use a drink. Or perhaps several.” And he walked back toward the dungeons.

* * *

 **Hermione Granger’s Dilemma**

 

The fire flickered merrily in Hermione’s office hearth. Outside the window, the night was dark and windy, but the temperature here was always, always comfortable, she made sure of it. Hermione took Lavinia Nott’s essay from the stack and turned it toward the sixth year girl sitting on the other side of her desk. “I requested essays from your other classes for our conference. To show you how your marks are progressing.”

The girl shifted in her chair. Her eyes went to the wall to her left; as far as Hermione could tell, she never once looked at the essay before her. “I know I’m doing well, Professor Granger.”

“That’s good.” Hermione met Lavinia’s veiled gaze with a smile. “You should tell everyone. You’re easily in the top five of the Sixth Year class, and those are Professor McGonagall’s words, not mine.”

Lavinia let out a soft breath. “Thank you.” It was very quietly spoken.

“Have you given any thought to my offer?”

The internship in the Ministry’s Experimental Charms department did not open up often, and Hermione had jumped on the chance to recommend Lavinia when the position had popped up again for the approaching summer. Her end of the paperwork, and Lavinia’s, were already filled out, except for one important item.

“I haven’t asked my father yet,” Lavinia muttered, now looking fixedly at the desktop. Her deep brown hair twisted in curls about her ears, a gift from her late mother, but her eyes and her slender nose were all her father’s, if Hermione remembered correctly.

Hermione leaned in and folded her hands atop her desk. “Lavinia, I’m sure he wouldn’t deny you the opportunity.”

She shrugged. “I’ve no idea what he’ll say, actually,” she said, meeting Hermione’s gaze.

“Would you like me to write him a letter? I’ll do that for you, explaining the situation.”

Lavinia’s mouth tightened. She pushed back in her chair, nearly bumping the wall behind her. “It’s not about that. He’s busy a lot of the time. It’s just hard to catch him for this sort of discussion.”

“Lavinia,” Hermione said. The girl glanced at her again, gaze wary. “You are one of the most talented students in my class. Your skills with Transfiguration charms are phenomenal; you’ve such potential. I would hate to see you miss out on something in which you would do so well.”

The girl very nearly smiled. It was not an expression Hermione saw often in class, but when she did, she always chased it with further assignments and more challenging tasks to whet Lavinia’s appetite. The girl did indeed have potential. But there had always been a hesitance whenever it moved outside the confines of the school. “I really can write to your father. It’s no trouble, Lavinia.”

“Oh, I think he’d let me.” Her manner now held a strange distance; she was no longer looking at Hermione. “It just doesn’t... It’s not… not such a high priority for him. Do you see what I mean?” The girl gestured with one hand, an odd sort of throw-away motion. “It’s not that I can’t ask him. I—” She paused, expression hardening in concentration, and then she let out a long sigh and sank back further into the chair. Her hand found its way into her robes and withdrew her wand; she began twisting it idly between her fingers. “I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. Never mind.”

Hermione wasn’t sure she knew either, but she had a suspicion. A wall had gone up somewhere in the Nott family, perhaps when Lavinia had first departed for Hogwarts, perhaps long before. Hermione had not kept such a close watch over her during her first few years at the school; it was only when the girl, at fifteen, began to excel right past the seventh year Transfiguration students that Hermione had focussed more intently on the newest descendent of the Nott line. But the rapport Lavinia had allowed the two of them to cultivate had grown deeper than Hermione had expected. Conferences had become something of a routine for them; Hermione felt rather more like a counsellor than a teacher.

Still, there was much she did not know about Lavinia Nott.

“Well, the offer is always open,” Hermione said gently, and Lavinia flashed her another near-smile before her face drifted into its normal mask. Hermione pushed the essays away to her right. “So. How are things with your roommates? Does Tessa Hartman still need Charms tutoring?”

Lavinia relaxed a bit. “She’s got it well enough,” she said simply. “Thinks she’s not so smart. She’s wrong.”

“I’ve always told her that,” Hermione said with a laugh. Her words were drowned out suddenly by an odd grinding noise, like stones being shifted across one another. Hermione looked up, and then around the room. It wasn’t coming from anywhere in particular; more from all around them. She frowned as it occurred to her where she’d heard the noise before: in the dungeon chamber during the spell she, Harry, and Draco had cast. She turned back to Lavinia. “That’s strange. Hold on, I need—”

Like a nebulous creature, the far wall warped. Folded. _Rolled_ out of the shadows and wrapped itself around Lavinia’s torso and legs, overturned the chair, and sucked backward into a still, flat surface again. All in a single second.

Hermione’s teeth snapped together. She stared at the toppled chair. “What—”

She leaped out of her seat, banging hard into her desk as she scrambled past it, and flung herself at the wall. Her hands met the cold surface with a sharp slap.

“Lavinia?” She slid her fingers over the stones, nicking the tips in her rush and finding no give, no swarm of heat. _“Lavinia!”_

There was no sound except that same low grinding.

“Oh, god.” Hermione struggled with her wand and stabbed it at the wall. “Finite Incantatem!”

The spell bounced off without leaving a sign. _“Solvo liberatis!”_

And another. Another. Finally she hit the wall with both fists, eyes burning as ferociously as the contraction in her chest. She allowed herself a single breath in the quiet room, and then gripped her wand and summoned her Patronus.

* * *

 **Draco**

 

“All right.” Draco smothered a yawn and strode into Granger’s office, tightening his night robe around him with one hand and digging around in a pocket with the other. “I’ve brought them. What in the name of Merlin’s knickers is so urgent?”

Harry and Granger were bent over, noses to the far wall and wands out. Draco heard Harry chanting spells of some sort. Granger was still in her professor’s robes, but Harry’s lower back showed where his loose t-shirt rose above his sweat pants. His hair was even more mussed than usual, as if he’d rolled right out of bed. Just like Draco had.

“A student’s missing,” Harry said, turning and looking at Draco for a moment. Granger straightened up. Her eyes were wide and shadowed. She gestured toward the wall with one hand.

“The wall in my office just… enveloped her! I’ve never seen anything like it before.” She ran both hands through her tangled hair. Draco frowned.

“What do you mean, enveloped her? Who’s missing?”

“Lavinia Nott,” Harry said, not turning from the wall this time. Granger took over the explanation.

“We were here having a conference, as we do every other week, and there was this grinding— the same grinding as when we performed the re-creation magic in the dungeon, do you remember? And the wall folded out. It came out— There was no time! I didn’t even know what I was looking at until it was over!”

Draco came across the room, vague unease twisting in his stomach. He fished one of the four requested phials out of his pocket— a potion that dissolved hard substances— and uncorked it. “What have you tried?”

Harry answered in a level voice. “Finite Incantatem, seven different releasing spells, the five main tracking incantations for short range… There’s nothing. We were just discussing blasting hexes.”

“Too risky. She could be right behind the surface, perhaps in some sort of chamber.” Draco moved around Granger toward the wall. Harry stood and stepped back just enough to give him room. Draco crouched down and tipped the phial against the stones, dribbling the potion down the wall’s surface. With a hiss and a crack, the mixture began to eat its way quickly through the stone… only to reveal another layer of thick rock behind. He peered up at Harry. “You wouldn’t know of any passageway back here, would you?”

The man shook his head. “There’s nothing. The charms I cast earlier would have shown it. It’s nothing but solid rock.”

Draco reached into his pocket and removed a second phial. Harry moved into the space next to him and began a series of other spells higher up on the wall.

Five minutes later, Draco was out of potions and trying all the more questionable enchantments he knew. They’d already eliminated the possibility of dark magic. There were no signs of it anywhere. The moderate blasting hexes had just taken chunks of the wall out; Granger’s office floor was littered with rubble. Granger had taken to consulting every book she had, flipping through the pages with shaking fingers.

“All right,” Harry said, lowering his wand and glaring at the wall. “What about concealment hexes? Maybe there was a latent one here from the war that was never removed.”

“No, there’s no residue of that.” Draco traced one of the jagged cracks in the stones with his thumb. “I’ve another potion that might give us an idea where she went. We’ll need something of Lavinia’s to add to it. The potion adheres to a wizard’s magical signature. It will take me about ten minutes to brew—”

He stopped speaking at the sound of rapid steps down the hallway, coming closer. Harry glanced at the door, and then turned fully as his son barrelled into sight. Albus skidded off the far edge of the doorway, knocking his shoulder hard before pushing into the room. He was in nothing but a well-worn shirt and pyjama bottoms that slapped at his bare feet.

“Al,” Harry started.

“Dad!” his son cried as he stumbled through Granger’s dishevelled office. “Dad, you have to come with me, something’s happened.”

“What is it?” Granger asked worriedly from Draco’s right. Albus Potter clutched the side of her desk and took two winded breaths.

“In… in the dorms. We were just talking. I was trying to talk to Scorpius Malfoy and he just— Dad, the wall _moved_. Behind him.”

Draco whipped completely around, spells forgotten. “Moved where? What happened?” he snapped, and the boy’s eyes went wide.

“He…” Albus swung his gaze to his father, and then the explanation poured out. “I swear the wall rippled. It swallowed him, right off his bed! Right in front of us! There was this grinding—”

Harry jumped forward and grabbed his son’s arm. “It swallowed him?”

Albus nodded so fast his head seemed to bob. “The wall just wrapped around him and he was gone.”

Granger gasped; Draco barely heard it. His heart was suddenly beating much too quickly. He sought to breathe normally but couldn’t tell if he’d succeeded or not. “My Scorpius?”

Albus nodded again.

Draco blinked, nodded back once. And stumbled sideways. He felt arms grab hold of him around the chest and haul him away from the floor, but the ringing in his ears was too loud to speak or hear over. He let himself be pulled up and led to a chair. The scent and the hard muscles of the arms around him told him it was Harry.

* * *

 **In the Room**

 

Scorpius woke to darkness and a sound like wind in a passage. The air was cold; he remembered he had limbs when his fingers clenched of their own accord. He forced his eyes wide and met nothing but fuzzy grey light. Panic jerked him onto his side, and he groaned at the aches in his muscles.

There was another noise near him, and then a voice. “Salazar, Malfoy. _Finally_ ,” it snapped. Scorpius twisted around and saw a girl crouched beside him in the gloom. She stared sourly down at him.

Scorpius scowled. “Fuck off, Nott.”

Lavinia Nott’s frown grew deeper; she turned her face away. Scorpius pushed himself up unsteadily until he was leaning on his elbows.

“What in all hells—?”

The room was squarely shaped, and cold. The light was dim and sooty, or perhaps it was his eyes. Scorpius clenched his teeth together to keep them from chattering. He felt damp; he patted his shirt with one hand, but it did not seem to be wet. Just chilled. Small favours.

He squinted sidelong at Lavinia Nott; she’d retreated to the nearest wall and now sat there hugging both knees to her chest. Scorpius sat up fully, scraping one elbow on the floor and cursing volubly. His feet were near frozen; he looked down for the cause and found himself barefoot, in his pyjama trousers instead of the jeans he’d expected. Oh, Merlin… he’d been in bed…

There was no other sound than that of wind from somewhere.

Lavinia Nott remained in her position of choice, both arms tucked around bent knees. He could see she had shoes on, a long-sleeved blouse and dark jeans. Her hair was in a messy braid that curled down over one shoulder. She’d still been dressed then, when she’d ended up here.

Not that he knew her all that well, but she looked very tense. She stared straight ahead, and Scorpius’ impatience mounted.

“Where are we?” he asked sharply.

She jerked her head around. “I don’t know!” she snapped, tilting her chin forward into the darkness. “You both just popped in here, didn’t you?”

Scorpius spun around and stopped. He could see another person lying on the ground, half on his side. As he watched, the boy stirred and groaned. Scorpius walked across the freezing floor and crouched down to get a better look at who it was. As he did, the boy’s eyes shot open and he gave a startled hiss. Scorpius stared for all of a second.

“Goyle. Fucking fantastic.”

Aubrey Goyle’s face pinched even more. The expression finally made its way into a scowl and Goyle rolled over onto his knees, only to promptly fall over again. Scorpius stood, snorting, and dusted himself off.

“Hey,” he called in Lavinia’s direction. “What did you mean, then, we just popped in?”

“Do you have your wand?” she asked instead of answering his question. Scorpius narrowed his eyes, and then checked himself. Looked back at her.

Her shoulders hunched. “Neither do I. And I had mine.”

And he hadn’t. Scorpius held his breath, waiting for the quiet in which to think. He hadn’t had his wand because he’d been nearly asleep, or he would have been… if not for that prick Potter. Potter had told him to turn over, look at him, he was asking him a question, and Scorpius had—

He’d never got to answer. Merlin, he could remember Potter’s words as clearly as if he were hearing them now, but the slice in time was so abrupt right after that there was nothing else.

“Whatever happened must have happened in the moment,” Scorpius murmured aloud. There was a black cowl over everything directly after Albus Potter spoke, and it wasn’t the darkness of confusion. Scorpius simply had not been conscious to witness anything. That was the conclusion he arrived at in the few seconds it took to survey what he could see. The walls seemed dry and the ceiling was arced in the style of Hogwarts, but he could _feel_ that he was deep down. Underground. His body just knew it; he was somewhere humans weren’t built for, and it set an edge on every nerve.

“Stop whispering,” came Lavinia’s aggravated voice behind him. Scorpius glared her into her irritated silence again.

Fuck her, he didn’t need her. He didn’t need Goyle stumbling around like a pissed elephant. He was a bloody Malfoy, he’d find his way out of this.

Scorpius instinctively reached for his wand and began to curse loudly and uninhibitedly as he realised yet again that he didn’t have it. “Fuck, _fuck!_ Fucking—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Aubrey’s voice grated.

Scorpius clenched his teeth against the insult he wanted to hurl back at the other boy. He made for the closest wall, working the excess energy out in movement. What he’d thought was some sort of walled-up doorway was actually raised, a rectangular shape, and right in the middle… Scorpius ran his fingers over smooth wood and started when he realised he was touching an empty picture frame. He stepped back and peered at it. Huge; the frame was ornately carved out of deep reddish wood. Something triggered in his memory and Scorpius turned around again. The other three walls held the same frames, each set into the middle, each empty. They must have weighed a hundred pounds each, they were so tall.

The room was filled suddenly with a heavy grinding, as if the stones themselves were moving. Scorpius stumbled backward and nearly fell. Lavinia had jumped to her feet and skirted away from her wall. The grinding intensified, so loud it hurt Scorpius’ ears. And then, abruptly, it ceased.

Scorpius stared across the room at Lavinia, breathing hard, wondering what he should do.

“What in Circe’s fucking name was that?” Aubrey shouted. The sound echoed harshly. Scorpius saw Lavinia roll her eyes. Her face was very pale, but her breathing had taken on the quality of relief.

“That happen before?” he ventured.

Her jaw tensed. “Right before you two showed up.”

Scorpius stared at her for another long second. And then he turned his head slowly. Lavinia did the same, and just as Aubrey let out another startled yell, Scorpius saw the girl.

She was curled into a tiny ball in the darkness by one of the walls, just beneath the frame that graced it, and she had _not_ been there before. He could see lace edging the hem of her sleeping gown, one hand curled on the floor beside her. Blonde hair.

Shivering, Scorpius crossed the room, pushing past a grumbling Aubrey. Already he could tell the newcomer was young, and very much asleep. Or unconscious. She, too, was barefoot, unlike the other two. Her fingertips looked dark, probably turning bluish from the cold.

“Hey.” Scorpius reached out and nudged her shoulder. She didn’t move. He squeezed her upper arm gently, and this time she jerked under his grip, her small hand clenching. Large, dark eyes opened and widened as they fixed on him.

“Who is it?” came Lavinia’s quaking voice from behind.

“You awake?” Scorpius said to the girl. She stared at him as if he were a monster; her hand swung upward, perhaps looking for her wand, and then her face crumpled and her shoulders began to shake.

Merlin, she couldn’t be more than a Second or Third Year.

Scorpius turned wordlessly to look at the other two and found them both staring back at him.

* * *

 **Draco**

 

“All right!” Granger’s voice sounded frantic, barely collected. “All right, let’s just _think_ about this for a moment.”

They quieted, all of them. Draco could actually hear his own heartbeat. The rest of the professors dwelt about McGonagall’s office in various states of tension, some sitting and clutching their armrests, others standing and fidgeting.

Harry stood behind Draco’s chair, and Draco could hear the soft intake of his breathing.

The school had never felt as huge as it did that night. It had taken Harry less than a minute to yank them all into action, sending whatever teachers he could rouse around the castle, one to each floor and the rest milling about in front of Granger’s office door, yawning or scratching their heads at the rough summons. But it was Granger who thought to check the other houses. Draco remembered her face paling as she sent Eleanora to Ravenclaw, demanding a head count, a list of names, anything. As the students in each house were turned out of their beds, her meaning became more and more shockingly clear.

Slytherin was missing a student, as was Ravenclaw. Gryffindor had lost one. And Hufflepuff had lost—

“We’ve done something. What we did— we must have triggered this.” Longbottom’s entire body sagged as he spoke, the disbelief and dismay evident in every inch of him. He shook his head, eyes fixed vacantly on the floor.

The tide of voices renewed itself, but Harry broke right through it, his words ringing sharply. “Triggered or not, students are missing. Blame is not the priority here. Finding them is. We need to focus on that, on finding a way to accomplish _that_.”

“Then what do we know?” Granger said more steadily.

“At least one student from every house is missing,” Eleanora stated in a subdued voice. “They were taken— removed from wherever they were within roughly... half an hour of each other?”

“Albus Potter arrived at my office about ten minutes after Lavinia vanished,” Granger said. “We can’t be sure about the others, but— all right. Two girls are missing, and two boys. There might be something in that, some sort of magical symmetry.”

“Could they have been experimenting with something on their own?” Eleanora asked. Her large eyes were more distressed than they had ever been. “I don’t know, some sort of… group magic? Something that inadvertently reacted with our spells?”

“The four of them didn’t move in the same circles, right?” Longbottom spoke up. “If they were messing with magic, it was most likely one or two of them, not all four. They aren’t the same age! They haven’t had the same magical education. And I know three of them are acquaintances, but—”

“You’re missing the point,” Draco snapped, and everyone went quiet. He glared at all of them, furious at himself, more furious than he’d been in many years.

The Muggle Studies professor, a short man by the name of Gimble, crossed his arms. “If you’ve something helpful to say, Malfoy—”

“Look at _who_ has been taken!” Draco snarled.

Another moment of silence followed. Granger broke it. “Yes, but even that doesn’t make complete sense! Lavinia Nott was first that we know of, then Scorpius,” she nodded to Draco sombrely, “and Aubrey Goyle.”

“Nott, Malfoy and Goyle.” Harry’s nearness startled Draco once again. The hush that followed those words was absolutely different from the others in its heaviness.

“But that doesn’t explain Estelle Marriott!” Granger interrupted. “There are significant differences. The others are all Sixth or Seventh Years, and all are signed up to participate in the re-creation exercise. She’s only a third year student, she’s not involved in this re-creation at all!”

“I doubt the school makes the distinction,” another professor grumbled.

“But it does,” Granger countered. “I specifically tailored the spells to discount anyone below a certain age. The first, second and third year students that are still on the premises have immunity to what we’re doing. I made absolutely certain those spells were unbreakable.”

“Well, maybe _you’re_ missing the point!” Gimble cried. “How could you possibly know the magic worked correctly? If what you’ve done has bollocksed up the school’s magic at an intrinsic level, then there’s no telling what will happen to any of us!”

“That is quite enough,” McGonagall said sharply. She stood from her chair and rested both hands on the desktop before her, fingers splayed. “I have personally tested every ward that was placed upon this castle by its Founders, and yes,” she said, looking pointedly at Gimble, “we do have records of those spells. Very detailed records. There are minor fluctuations, but every protection charm and concealment spell is present and accounted for. Ms Granger,” she went on, “could there be a problem with the new additions when the building itself was repaired? Something that was perhaps overlooked?”

“I’ll need to run tests to be certain,” Granger said carefully, “but that could definitely account for the fluctuations. If a spell was not reset correctly when they rebuilt the ruined areas, it could have drastic effects on any magic performed in the vicinity.”

“When can you begin?”

“Right now.” Granger stood up. “I’ve the necessary texts in my office.”

McGonagall nodded. “Then it’s settled. Mr Gimble, Ms Barclay-Kurtz, Mr Rajinder and Mr Longbottom, please accompany Ms Granger. Ms Dodgett and Ms Peckham, if you will relieve the Aurors in each dormitory and see the students safely to bed in the Charms wing? Thank you. Mr Potter and Mr Malfoy, please remain. I’d like a word with you both.”

The other teachers hurried out. Draco watched them go with a twisted sort of respect; whatever they might think of the abducted children’s families, they knew what was right and they were moving with due speed. But his interest in them dropped away as soon as the door shut. Scorpius filled every nook and cranny of his mind once more. He had no idea where his son was, if he was even still—

McGonagall walked quickly to her chair and sat down. “Now. If you will please take a seat, Harry, we’ve much to sort out.”

Draco pulled his thoughts free of the horrible path they were rushing down. Harry scraped a chair into place beside him and bent himself into it. Draco forced himself to sit up straighter. He fixed his gaze on the Headmistress.

“Gentlemen, this situation is very grave,” she said. “I understand you have not yet sent word to the Ministry?”

Harry cleared his throat. “No, I haven’t. Neither have the other Aurors, under my orders. At this point, the only thing we can tell the Ministry is that we have no clue what’s happened. And believe me, they will not want to hear that.”

“Agreed. They must, of course, be contacted, the timing of which I will leave to you, Harry, but they will hear it from you and not some indelicate tabloid that fancies itself a veritable conveyor of news. Clearly we must inform the families of the missing children, and we must do so within the next hour. There’s your time limit, Harry. I will give Ms Granger that long as well, but there are statutes I cannot and will not disobey. Their parents have the right to know what has occurred.”

Draco nodded absently. He scrubbed a shaking hand through his hair. “The other children,” he murmured. “Perhaps they should be sent home as well. We’ve no idea if this is over yet.”

McGonagall was nodding, too. “I think it only prudent to keep them in one of Ms Granger’s safe zones for the night. Bringing them out of the castle in the morning will be our top priority. There are plenty of ways we can make living on the grounds comfortable and safe until we figure out what is going on. I want more than this, do you understand? We need to have more than this for the Ministry!” She smacked one palm down on the desk with a sudden slap; it was the first sign she’d given of the true depth of her concern over the situation.

Draco saw both of Harry’s hands clench around the armrests of his chair as he stood. “I’ll go help Hermione. The more minds on the problem, the better chances we’ll have.”

“I may be able to give you the ‘more’ that you need,” Draco said quietly. Potter paused and McGonagall’s mouth closed. She folded her hands in front of her.

“Explain, please.”

“You should know that the Hufflepuff girl was adopted,” Draco said. The other two looked at him, but Draco could only bring himself to return Harry’s gaze. It was somewhat steadying. “Her parents were reported deceased over a decade after the end of the war. She’s been raised by the Marriotts since she was two months old.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “And her real parents?”

Draco tried not to think of Scorpius. “The rumours of their demise are… incorrect.”

Harry and McGonagall watched him. “Are you saying they were former Death Eaters as well, Mr Malfoy?”

“One of them was.” Draco rubbed his forehead. “I have no intention of contacting Estelle’s birth father, and you’ll just have to trust my judgment in that regard. But… I can contact her mother.”

* * *

“So you do think it’s about Death Eaters in the families,” Granger said quietly. They were huddled in one of the dungeon halls, almost out of earshot of the multitude of magical spells flooding the room where Draco, Harry and Hermione had performed the re-creation enchantments.

McGonagall nodded gravely. “If what Mr Malfoy tells me is correct, then Estelle Marriott is the natural child of at least one former follower of Voldemort. As for the other three, the connection is apparent.”

“So we’ve got four missing children whose parents were once on Voldemort’s side, taken by a school in which we’ve been recreating wartime conditions.” Harry’s mouth was a hard, ugly line. “I can tell you exactly what the Ministry will say when I tell them.”

“I think we can all guess what the Ministry will say,” Granger said despondently. “And they’d be right. Gimble was right: there’s something wrong with the spell work in the newer parts of the school, the ones they rebuilt after the final battle. What we did must have loosened it even more; I swear I never saw a sign of it while I was developing the enchantments we used, and I did check, multiple times. I never would have done it if I’d known that things were unstable.”

“No one is blaming you, Ms Granger,” McGonagall said. “Reconstruction of ancient magical buildings is never an easy task, especially buildings with such heavy protective enchantments as this castle.”

“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it?” Harry gestured at the walls of the corridor. “We’ve somehow… I don’t know, messed about with the older protective spells. Hogwarts looks after its own, it always has. But those charms have been skewed in some way by what we did, and now they seem to be doing the reverse.”

Granger had grown very still except for one forefinger, which was tapping incessantly on her chin. “Maybe not,” she said slowly. “I think the spells actually worked. What we were intending to do, I mean.”

“What are you talking about?” Draco said edgily.

“What if the school _is_ protecting its own? Think about it. As far as the castle knows, we’re in wartime conditions again, at least emotionally. And everyone knows the castle’s magic is affected by the emotional state of those within. If students are scared, its defences rise just a bit. Nothing extreme, but enough of a response to quicken the more tactile defences if needed later. The school is responding to the emotions we’ve _fed_ it.”

“But why take the children?” Harry asked.

“They do all have family backgrounds in common,” Granger went on, feeling her way through her analysis. “What if the school, lacking a proper threat, somehow… _interpreted_ the children as a threat? Just think, if the school somehow knew they were related to former Death Eaters… Through the Sorting Hat, perhaps?” And there she stopped, looking a bit helpless at the looks on their faces. “Oh, I don’t know how, but just consider it for a moment!”

“So hypothetically, this is the castle’s way of expunging the threat of dark magic?” Draco stated bluntly. “By taking students? Salazar, the original magic would have to be completely fucked up, Granger! No child in the history of this facility has ever been harmed by the school itself. Bloody hell, I directly threatened the castle and all of the people in it when I was sixteen! I wasn’t swallowed by a wall! I wasn’t touched at all!”

“Who knows how functional the original magic is anymore?” Harry said, and Draco felt the other man’s fingers touch down on his forearm. He yanked his arm away, but Harry kept talking as if he hadn’t noticed. “If something is wrong, as you say, then the school could be misinterpreting everything, reacting incorrectly—”

“That doesn’t explain how it knew to target these children!” Draco shot back, gesturing harshly. “It would have to have some sense memory, and even then—”

“Oh my god, the blood!” Granger whispered. She stared at Draco, and her eyes flicked down to his arm. “We did it, with your blood.”

Draco couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. Granger reached out and then drew her hand back.

“You… Draco, you still have the Dark Mark.”

“Of course I do,” he ground between his teeth. He could feel Harry watching him. “It’s not exactly the type of thing that wears away overnight because it feels like it.”

“Well, that sort of magic,” Granger went on, “is infused into the bearer’s blood. It’s how Voldemort had such control over his Death Eaters, how he could call them, how he could hurt them… And I’m willing to bet that traces of the Mark are still in your blood.”

Draco studied her for a few seconds and then sucked in a breath. “I see where you’re going now. Scorpius is my son, he has my blood running through him.”

“And possibly the same traces of the Mark.” Granger was nodding. “Miniscule. It couldn’t hurt him. It would never be near enough to exert control over him, obviously. But you got the Mark before Scorpius was born. My god, they all did, didn’t they? Before their children were born. And then, during our spell—”

“But the school would need the children’s blood in order to determine if they bear traces of the Dark Mark, am I correct?” McGonagall interrupted.

Granger waved her hand impatiently. “Who knows how many times the students nick themselves in the Potions lab, or go to the Infirmary with bangs and bruises from Quidditch? The Herbology classes alone give Madam Levine enough bandaging practice to last all year! Exposure to the children’s blood is a given. Now, Draco, you said your left arm was burning when we were casting the spells, right at the end. When we gave the school a taste of Draco’s blood, and not just his blood, but his blood as part of a _spell set to alter the school itself…_ ”

“All right,” Harry said grimly. “It knew they had a Dark Mark in the bloodline. And we skewed things just enough that the castle read the apparent Death Eater threat as exactly that and took the children. We have got to find them, now. You have no concept of what such tainted magic might do in response to a threat from supposed Death Eaters. As far as Hogwarts is aware, it’s protecting the other students and teachers.”

“Harry, it is time for you to inform the Ministry,” McGonagall stated. “And time for me to contact the other parents. This has gone too far. We need assistance.” She turned to leave, but Draco raised his hand.

“Wait a minute. The school has my blood, and I am currently bearing a Dark Mark on my arm. Why hasn’t it taken me? I’m the most apparent threat, not the children.”

They all stopped where they stood. Draco saw distress sweep the Headmistress’ face, and he decided it was something he never wanted to see again. They wavered there in the corridor and the sounds of the chanting from downstairs filtered up around them. At last, Harry gave a sigh and leaned back against the wall. “Let’s go back to the beginning and—”

“Oh!” Granger cried. She pointed at Draco, then herself, and rushed past them up the stairs. “It’s in my office, just let me—”

She was already yards ahead of them when they finally followed her, and running full tilt for the ground level, her robes whipping behind. Draco jogged behind Harry all the way up three flights of steps, but Granger was coming back out of her office toward them, thumbing frantically through a well-loved book by the time they’d reached the top of the stairs. Harry came to an abrupt stop when he saw her and Draco heard him snort. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

“It’s here in _Hogwarts, A History_. And in other, older texts, but the point is, you, we, we’re all licensed professors of Hogwarts. The school recognises that, and _that’s_ why it hasn’t harmed you!” She stabbed a finger excitedly at a paragraph of the page she was looking at and held it out to Draco, but all the words blurred when he looked. He shook his head.

“So that overrides the Mark.”

“Very possibly. Severus Snape had the Mark, as did Barty Crouch. Granted, the school wasn’t leaping out and swallowing people whole at the time, but it just shows that the Mark is not the overwhelming factor in whether or not the school accepts an instructor. If I’m right, the school’s own magic is conflicting with itself. It views you as a professor, and thus a desired occupant, even thought you bear the symbol of an outside threat.”

They began the quick trek back downstairs to inform McGonagall. Draco fell behind the other two on the stairs. His stomach was churning, had been ever since his charming tattoo had first been mentioned. Another way that his past had hurt his son, was continuing to hurt his son, and he had no way to reverse things, no way to go back and undo what he’d done when he was Scorpius’ age. No way to find his son and get him out of the school’s warped jaws.

No way of knowing whether he’d ultimately destroyed his own child or not.

McGonagall’s curt nod of acceptance was quick, almost before Granger had finished her explanation. “Then we’ve addressed all the information we have for now. Harry, you may use the Gryffindor common room to contact Kingsley Shacklebolt. I will be in my office, informing Theodore Nott and the Goyles. Mr Malfoy, if you are ready, you may come with me to contact Estelle’s birth mother.”

They were interrupted by footsteps hurrying up from the dungeons. A moment later, Eleanora appeared out of the gloom, breathing hard. “It just occurred to me, we’ve been idiots. The house-elves! They know this castle backward and forward, and even if they don’t, they’ve magic that can take them anywhere inside it! They’ll be able to find the children!”

* * *

“Let me get this straight,” Harry repeated slowly. “You know where they are.”

Winky’s eyes were very wide, much too large for her small head. She stood with her hands clasped tightly, looking up at Harry. Her ears had drooped right down to her shoulders. She cleared her throat nervously. “Winky knows, Harry Potter, sir.”

“But you won’t bring them to us.”

Winky’s hands twisted even more, spindly knuckles bunching. She fidgeted on the balls of her feet, glancing around as if there were help to be had. “Winky is very, very sorry, Harry Potter, sir. Winky would bring them back if she could.”

“You’re a house-elf,” Draco snapped irritably. “You can go anywhere in the castle, and you can take anything and anyone with you! I’ve done my research and my family has employed house-elves for centuries. What exactly do you mean, ‘if you could’?”

Winky’s distress grew much more pronounced. Her eyes went pleadingly to Harry and Granger. “Professor Malfoy must understand— Winky is not able to— to follow his order.”

“Winky,” Granger said quickly, before Draco could summon something more caustic. “I’m afraid _I_ don’t understand. Why are you unable to follow our instructions?”

“Because,” Winky burst out desperately, and then drew herself in again. “Winky has orders already, Professor Granger, miss.”

“Did you take the children?” Draco snarled, and the elf’s eyes grew absolutely huge. She scampered forward as if she would grab hold of his robes, more upset than he’d ever seen a house-elf get.

“Oh, no, Professor Malfoy, sir, no, Winky would never take the children!”

“Then _why_ can’t you bring them back to us?” That was Eleanora. Winky stilled, turning in place as each of them stared down at her.

“The masters—” she began. Her face had gone very pale, her shoulders hunched. “The masters have ordered Winky not to.”

McGonagall cleared her throat gruffly. She knelt down in front of the trembling house-elf and spoke gently. “Winky, I, Professor Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts, request that if you know where the missing students are, you bring them to us immediately.”

The house-elf stepped backward miserably, eyes downcast. “Oh, Minerva Headmistress, Winky wants to bring them to you. Winky wants—” Her fingers began to dig manically into her arms, and Draco had the suspicion that she was trying to hurt herself.

Harry, it seemed, had the same notion. “Winky, Winky, stop. You aren’t in trouble! We just… aren’t following. Where are the missing children?”

Hesitantly, the house-elf dropped her hands to her sides. “Winky cannot say! Winky has been told not to say! The masters—”

“We are the masters,” Draco growled, and Winky cowered. “Or has someone else taken over in the last few moments?”

This time, Winky remained in dejected silence, looking at the floor.

“Is someone hurting the children?” Harry asked in a strangled voice.

Winky’s eyes bulged. “Oh, _no_ , sir! They is not hurting! They is never hurting!”

“Then tell us what’s become of them!”

Tears began to drip down her cheeks. “Winky is… is sorry, Harry Potter, sir. But the masters have ordered. Winky cannot disobey.”

“Who is she talking about?” Granger asked. “Who are the masters? Winky—”

But Draco grabbed the house-elf by the front of her tunic and yanked her to him. Her small hands seized around his and she stared up, face slack with fear. Granger’s hand closed over his shoulder and he heard her snap at him to let her go, but he just gripped tighter.

“If _anything_ happens to my son,” Draco hissed into her ear, “I’ll find you.”

She said nothing, though her mouth opened and closed. Finally, her head drooped and she shut her eyes. Draco let go of her.

They were all staring at him, except for McGonagall, who was looking at Winky fiercely. “You are dismissed, Winky,” she said at last. The house-elf nodded gratefully and vanished. McGonagall shoved her hands into her sleeves. Her shoulders had gone rigid. “Draco, Harry, and Hermione, accompany me to my office. Eleanora, please begin organising the evacuation of the remaining students.”

Eleanora cast a glance around the group, then nodded and retreated into the dungeons. The rest of them followed McGonagall up the main staircase.

* * *

Harry pulled his head back out of the fire with a long sigh and rubbed his eyes. “There. Kingsley will have the others here within the next half hour. Most of them are out doing field work and it’ll take time to call them in.”

“Good,” McGonagall said tightly. Her face had pinched itself into a deep frown and showed no signs of relaxing. Her Floo calls to the parents of the missing children had been short and to the point, and each one had left her expression more haggard than the last. She’d watched in silence as Draco bent to his knees and tossed his own handful of powder into the flames, whispering the name of an obscure little apartment building near Chesterfield. Estelle’s mother said very little when he’d explained the situation. The clench in her jaw was enough to tell him that it wasn’t because she didn’t have anything to say. The only thing she had uttered aloud was, _All right. I’m coming._

Neither Harry nor McGonagall had asked after her identity; they’d know soon enough anyway. Draco only asked for one thing: immunity for her when she arrived, no matter what Harry or Shacklebolt had to say about it.

Granger had been pacing the office the entire time, deep in thought. Draco doubted she realised they’d been using the Floo at all. “Got to be a logical answer to all of this. Even magic follows rules. Things don’t just happen, even the things none of us can explain.” She turned to face the rest of them, her eyes squinted in thought. “For the house-elves to be involved, there has to be good reason. There’s never been a case of a house-elf participating in the abduction of a child living in a domicile in which the elf resides, unless ordered to do so by his or her employer, and only if it was for the child’s direct benefit. I don’t believe a house-elf would be able to do harm to a child of the family it serves. Or in this case, a member of the student body it serves.”

“She did say they weren’t being harmed,” Harry said from his perch in front of the hearth. “Seemed absolutely appalled by the idea.”

Granger nodded, looking even more relieved. Draco wondered just how much she trusted the history of house-elves as written by the wizards who had enslaved them. “They’ve never refused to help us before,” she went on. “Why now?”

No one offered an answer.

“The masters,” Granger continued at last. “Who does she mean by ‘the masters’? Wouldn’t the master be the head of the school?”

“Obviously in this case, my status does not apply,” McGonagall said heavily. She stroked her chin with an absent finger, her eyes on the portraits decorating her office. The former Headmasters and mistresses peered back silently.

And then McGonagall tensed. She rose from her desk and came around it, her attention fixed on the portrait of Albus Dumbledore. Her hand stretched out, fingers brushing the frame.

“Who could be more master than the Headmaster?” she murmured.

“Minerva?” Granger asked.

“The masters,” McGonagall whispered. Her eyes widened. “And the _mistresses_.”

Dumbledore’s smile sparkled down at her.

McGonagall spun around. “She means the Founders. The masters of Hogwarts.”

“Of course!” Granger rushed to the desk and the books piled there, but instead of grabbing one of them, she snatched a quill and a scrap of parchment. “Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin. Anything they said would be followed first and foremost, obviously!”

“Except that they are all unequivocally deceased,” Draco cut in.

“Are there… portraits of them somewhere? Maybe in the house dormitories themselves?”

“No,” McGonagall said, shaking her head. “In all my years here, I’ve never seen a portrait of any of them.”

“That’s rather odd,” Granger mused, “unless… they’re not located in the more frequented parts of the school. What if they’re in one of the older sections of the castle? The oldest part, maybe.” Her eyes gleamed.

Harry got quickly to his feet. “Near where we set the spell.”

“Maybe the school isn’t protecting itself after all,” Granger said. “Maybe we just… woke them up.”

There was a sizzle of white light at McGonagall’s door and all four of them jumped, whipping their wands out. But the only thing to come sailing into the room— directly through the wood, no less— was the stately stork Patronus of Eleanora Barclay-Kurtz. It settled on its long legs, feathers ruffling. “Headmistress, I’m afraid we’ve a problem. Theodore Nott is at the front door, and he’s not alone.”

McGonagall made for the door immediately. “We will be down in a moment, Eleanora.”

The stork flapped is glistening wings and made to take flight, but Granger cried out a “Wait!” She was leaning over, clutching the side of the desk. “Whatever you do, don’t let him inside the castle!”

“What?” Harry said.

She turned wide eyes on them all. “He’s got a Dark Mark. And he’s _not_ a teacher.”

* * *

Even Draco’s hurried pace couldn’t bring him down in time to catch the majority of Theodore’s words, but the finale as he shouted at Eleanora was quite clear: “—you bring my daughter out to me at once, or let me inside the damn castle!”

Harry actually slowed down, one hand still on the small door that stood open within the massive front doors of the castle. Draco had to squeeze by him, and as he passed, he was sure he saw something resembling discomfort on Harry’s face. Harry, who had never been afraid of anything in Draco’s experience, was concerned about facing a raving Theodore Nott.

But perhaps Draco should have taken it as a warning, because as soon as his former roommate’s eyes fixed on him, the seething wave turned in his direction.

“Malfoy!” Theodore literally shouldered Eleanora aside, striding toward the front steps in such a forceful manner that Draco felt like taking a step back. The thin man wore black robes with tasteful midnight blue embroidery hugging the hems and circling up his sleeves like gauntlets. To her credit, Eleanora raced until she was in front of him again and shoved a hand against his chest, stopping him mid-step.

It was then that Draco recognised Greg Goyle a few feet behind, looking bewildered and uneasy in a more casual set of grey and black robes, minus the overcoat. Theodore’s snarling had grown quite a bit angrier. “Get out of my way, Barclay-Kurtz, or I promise you—”

“Nott!” Draco stepped down the stairs, and Harry followed. Eleanora turned a reddened face to them.

“You want to tell me why I’m supposed to keep him outside?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“There are children out on the _lawn_ ,” Theodore hissed. Draco looked and saw at least thirty students with bags and trunks, hugging themselves against the early morning cold. The twist to Theodore’s mouth was murderous. “Where’s Lavinia?”

Draco summoned himself against the old memories that had begun to bubble up at the sight of his childhood housemates. “Theodore, there’s something I need to explain about your daughter.”

“And my son,” Greg Goyle said from behind Theodore. “Are they hurt? What’s happened?”

But Harry answered before Draco could, moving closer until he and Theodore were only a few feet apart. Draco had the fleeting sense that Harry was placing himself between them. “The re-creation spells have gone wrong. They’ve affected the school’s magic erratically. Several children have gone missing.”

Theodore looked about ready to explode. “And you’ve done nothing about it?” He turned to Draco. “Malfoy.” It was almost pleading.

“We’ve done everything we can so far,” Draco said. “Aurors are on their way, and Granger’s working on it, and you know she bloody well won’t leave it alone until she’s discovered the secrets of everything in the universe.”

Theodore’s eyes narrowed, but Draco plowed on. “Lavinia’s been missing since last night. The others disappeared shortly afterward.”

“Let me in, then,” Theodore said crisply. “I may not be as clever as _Granger_ , but I’m sure I can add something to her efforts!”

He made to push past Harry, but Draco grabbed his shoulder. “We can’t let you in, Nott.”

“Why not?” That was Greg; Draco didn’t think Theodore was capable of speech at that moment, his face was so red.

“There’s a pattern to the students’ disappearance and we can’t let you in until we can be sure why those children in particular were singled out,” Draco said as sedately as he was able. “Stay out here. I promise I’ll tell you everything we know.”

Theodore grabbed the open collar of Draco’s shirt with both fists. “And why the hell should you be so eager to help me, Malfoy? Tell me that.”

Faster than Draco could track, Harry’s hands had locked around Theodore’s wrists, dislodged his hands, and shoved him away. “Because Scorpius is one of the missing children!”

Greg’s mouth opened soundlessly, but Theodore’s blue eyes flicked from Draco to Greg and back again. His jaw clenched so hard his body began to shake. “Your sons, and my daughter,” he snarled. There was something painfully new in his voice and in his face; it started Draco’s heart hammering at a new speed. “I think I can damn well decipher the pattern!”

 _“Theodore.”_ Draco grabbed Theodore’s arms and shook him, making him blink. “I’m going to find them. I will get them back. I promise you.”

Whatever had powered Theodore’s rage left his frame in a silent whoosh. He sagged, his body more fragile than ever. Draco saw his throat work.

“She’s all I have left,” was the whisper that met Draco’s ears.

Draco shut his eyes. “Then stay here. We’ll get the other students out, and then I’ll send Granger down and she’ll explain everything to you.”

* * *

The students of Slytherin had made up the group already out on the lawn. Hufflepuff came next through the atrium, a troop of solemnly sleepy students hugging their bedding to their chests, followed by a straggly line of Gryffindors. The youngest pattered by in slippers toward the front doors, the older ones dragging what chests and bags the professors had been able to retrieve thus far. Draco stood near the open door, wand in one hand, arms crossed over his chest in an effort to stave off the breeze flowing inside as the students flowed out. Harry stood beside him, his wand out as well, eyeing the upper echelons of the front atrium as if the stairs themselves would leap down and gobble the children up.

Several more Aurors were now in attendance, some setting up protective wards around the makeshift encampment on the lawn, others in attentive discussion with Granger and McGonagall by the main staircase. Draco watched their gesticulating hands, wondering if their presence would actually— oh, hope of hopes— solve the problem.

“Aurors are supposed to fix everything, aren’t they?” Draco muttered.

“Not always,” Harry said mildly. “But we try.”

Beyond Harry, Draco could see Albus Potter coming out of the corridor leading to the Charms wing, his hair a wild twist of black. The boy looked around, sharp-eyed, and then his socked feet turned toward them where they stood. Draco pointed and Harry craned his head around.

“Al. Did you sleep?”

“Yeah.” The younger Potter’s voice was still scratchy. He scuffed his fingers through his hair and glanced at Draco.

“Your sister back there?”

“Yeah, she dropped her bedding in the hall. Ought to be out in a tick.” The boy’s eyes flicked to Draco yet again. “Dad. Can I talk to you for a second?”

Harry’s grin was a steady beacon. “Sure. Let’s wait till everyone’s outside first, though?”

Albus nodded, a faint smile spilling across his face. “I’ll just go stand with Aunt Hermione, shall I?”

“Please do,” Harry said. Draco thought he might be trying to hold in a chuckle, but he couldn’t be sure.

The boy retreated to the vicinity of the stairs and positioned himself within a few yards of his aunt, leaning against one of the atrium’s columns. Harry watched him the entire way, and then turned to the corridor again with a sigh, most likely waiting for his daughter to come through. Draco thought of Scorpius, how he wasn’t going to see him walk out of that hallway, and moved restlessly.

“You’re worried about him,” Harry said. He wasn’t looking at Draco.

“Merlin, you certainly are intelligent.” An instant after Draco said it, he regretted it. He looked over at Harry to find him looking back, face blank. “Yes, I am,” Draco finished, more quietly.

Harry laid his hand on Draco’s bare arm and squeezed. Draco looked up, but Harry did not remove his hand.

“Draco,” Harry said in a low, firm voice. “I want you to know this. I’m going to do everything in my power to get your son back. Whatever it takes.”

Harry’s words echoed up the high walls like a ghost’s voice before fading off. When Harry finally smiled at him and turned away, it was to again meet the eyes of his son where the boy lounged against the wall column, waiting for the rest of his house to file past him. Harry’s expression went warm in a way reserved only for a parent and his or her child; Draco recognised it with a sense of wistfulness.

Albus smiled back and pushed off the column, shoving his hands in his pockets. A sharp surge of sound erupted in Draco’s ears. He’d barely recognised it as the same grinding that had heralded the beginning of everything, before the column behind Albus Potter reached out and snatched him backward.

In.

Out of sight.

Harry leapt to his feet, his face as white as frost, and dashed for his son, but Draco could see it was too late. The nearest students screamed and fell against each other in heaps, then began a mad scramble for the doors. The Aurors shouted out shielding charms, herding the children as far away from the walls and columns as possible. Draco ran after Harry, Granger’s face as a pale mask in the corner of his eye. Harry reached up as if he could grab the column and wrench it off its foundation with his bare hands.

“Albus!”

Draco had just reached his side, ready with the spells they’d already tried— what else was there to do?— when Harry staggered backward. His face when he turned around was ghostly.

“Lily,” Draco heard him whisper.

Harry pushed past him toward the Charms corridor, skirting around the fleeing children and emerging professors. Draco followed but was forced to a stop by the mass of moving people: Ravenclaws hurrying out now, their belongings abandoned. He tried to push his way through the panic, but Harry appeared first, holding his daughter in his arms. The girl’s red hair whipped around them both as Harry ran.

“Take her,” Harry said, depositing his daughter into Granger’s arms. “Get them out, get them all out!”

* * *

 **In the Room**

 

“All I’m saying,” Aubrey Goyle said, throwing up his hands as he stalked past Scorpius, “is that my father was a Death Eater, and so was yours. So was hers. Kind of coincidental, don’t you think?”

“Oh, brilliant, Goyle,” Lavinia snarled. Scorpius frowned at her. Her agitation had been growing in noticeable increments ever since he’d first woken up and seen her hovering over him. “And we’d just forgotten about that, hadn’t we?”

“It’s the truth,” was all Aubrey said, shrugging his wide shoulders. “The sooner you deal with it, the sooner we figure out what the fuck’s going on.”

“I know my father was a Death Eater!” Lavinia yelled abruptly, the sound bouncing off the walls. “Why don’t you deal with your own bloody issues, you bloody—”

“Shut up!” Scorpius cried. “Just shut your stupid mouths, both of you. You’re only guessing anyway!”

“You think you’re so smart, you figure it out, then, _Malfoy_.” Aubrey’s tone was hard with dislike. “Merlin knows your family’s the paragon of intelligent behavior. Such a happy home life, you aren’t even speaking to your own dad, and believe me, everyone’s noticed.”

Scorpius jumped to his feet, intending to punch the magical ability right out of the other boy. “Don’t you ever talk about my family, you—”

“I’m saying, ask _her_ , you idiot,” Aubrey shouted over him, pointing one steady finger at the fourth occupant of their cell. Scorpius stopped and then looked over his shoulder. The girl’s eyes went wide. She clutched her knees with both hands. Something in Scorpius’ chest twinged.

“Leave her out of this,” he growled, turning back to Aubrey.

The other boy stared at him unwaveringly. “Fucking ask her about her parents, Malfoy, or I will. Falcons to Cannons, they were just like ours.”

Scorpius wanted to leap at Aubrey. His fingers felt tight and hot, the muscles nearly ripping under the strain of clenching his fists. It was the pain in his forearms that brought his head back into the room. He dragged his eyes away from Aubrey and tracked around until he was looking again at the youngest member of their sad little group. She gazed back at all of them, one after another: her eyes jumped from him to Aubrey, then down and past them both to where Lavinia sat with her arms crossed over raised knees, then back up to Scorpius again. From the look on her face, she was just as uncertain of him as she was of the others. Part of him rebelled forcefully at ever being put into the same category as the other two, even if it was by a barely teenaged girl about whom he knew nothing.

But that was the issue anyway, wasn’t it?

He approached her on cautious steps and she watched him come without speaking. But she did not move either, and he took it as a good sign. When he’d got within a few feet of her, he crouched down, wincing against the ache in his muscles, and looked her right in the eye.

“What’s your name?” he asked softly. She bit her lip.

“Estelle. Um, Marriott,” she added hurriedly as Aubrey stirred. Her eyes darted back to Scorpius and held. “Mum’s Gloria and Da’s Alric.”

“Never was a Death Eater named Gloria or Alric Marriott,” Lavinia grumbled. Now she too was clutching her knees. “Bloody do-gooder names.”

“Thank you,” Scorpius said to Estelle, and then scowled at Aubrey. “I told you her parents weren’t part of Voldemort’s crowd.”

“I…” Her voice piped up again, and this time Scorpius was arrested by a tug on his sleeve. “Wait. Wait?”

He studied her, first her face and then her fingers on his arm. “What?”

Her cheeks went red. Scorpius felt a different sort of cinching in his chest. “What year are you?” he asked in a lower voice.

“Second. I’m a Second Year.”

“All right. Now, what did you want to say?”

“My parents. And the… and those people. They might have been. I mean, I think… I don’t know.”

“What, under different names?” Aubrey broke in. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Changing their names and hiding out after.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I mean, Mum’s my mum and Da’s my dad. But they didn’t have me. You know?”

“How could they not have had you?” Lavinia’s two sickles, this time.

Scorpius waved harshly at Lavinia. “But you call them—”

“That’s ‘cause they _are_ ,” Estelle said indignantly. “But I’m not their real kid, am I?”

A pause. And then, “Adopted?”

She nodded, her limp ringlets bobbing against her shoulders. “When I was a baby. They told me.”

Scorpius avoided looking at Aubrey, but that didn’t stop the other boy from crowing. “I knew it! I bet you anything they were the Dark Lord’s mates.”

“He’s not the lord of anything anymore,” Scorpius snapped, and Aubrey went quiet. Scorpius eyed Estelle. “So you’ve never met your birth parents.”

“No, but I’ve seen pictures of—”

Her voice was drowned out completely by the return of the grinding. Scorpius grabbed Estelle’s hand and pulled her away from the wall to the centre of the room. Lavinia was already there, standing a few feet from Aubrey. They all stared at the boundaries of their prison, eyes wide.

Again, the grinding ceased. Estelle’s fingers had woven themselves tightly into the hem of Scorpius’ shirt. He uncurled her grip and moved away from the centre of the room. It was still so dark that all he could see were shadows in the corners. But his eyes had become enough accustomed to the lack of light that—

“What’s that?” Aubrey whispered.

Scorpius didn’t answer. He walked toward the dark bulge in the corner before him, moving more quickly than perhaps he should have, but he was damned if he’d look as scared to them as they looked to him. His foot hit against something solid and he almost went sprawling. He staggered sideways, hissing at the pain in his bashed toes. He knelt, reaching out with one hand until he touched whatever it was. And came up with soft cloth and a warm body.

Scorpius unceremoniously pushed the person onto his or her back, and the newcomer let out a low cough. Scorpius leaned in until the person’s face came into view, green eyes blinking.

“What—” Scorpius blinked right back. “Albus Potter?”

“Well, there goes that theory,” Lavinia muttered behind him.

* * *

 **Draco**

 

The first day Draco looked at Albus Potter and actually _saw_ him was not long after the night he’d spent on Harry’s couch. Then, Albus Severus Potter became Albus instead of yet another Potter without personality. The funny thing was, Draco still had no idea who Albus Potter was, but he did have a better understanding of his father.

Albus Potter was no slouch in Potions, nor was he the star pupil any longer. That title belonged, interestingly enough, to a fifth year Hufflepuff named Meadette Hinton, who wore her hair in a loose tangle of a bun but kept her notes, robes, and questions spotless and properly organised every single day. The second son of Harry James Potter was known for his crooked slouch to the right as he studied the front board and worked his jaw over the instructions Draco wrote there. Often Draco was certain the boy was about to raise his hand and address some perceived inconsistency, but he never quite followed through, only snagging the hair from his eyes before turning to his cauldron and beginning the day’s assignment.

That day when he saw Albus for Albus, Draco pondered for the first time whether it was because of his father’s experience in Potions, if the boy knew the dark side of his second namesake as well as he obviously knew the light. Albus Potter had an appreciation for potions that rivalled everyone’s, including Scorpius’, but then again, it was currently not difficult to show more enthusiasm than Draco’s son, especially for activities that involved Draco. The Potter boy was attentive, and sometimes Draco actually wanted him to raise his hand and argue, because even Potions masters were not perfect; he could admit to making one or two errors on the blackboard throughout the year.

After the night when the elder Potter had thrashed through the shambles of his home life, however, Draco found he couldn’t stomach the curt dismissals that had welled up in ready response to Albus’ almost-raised hand. The class surely did not notice a difference; the Snape-ish insults were never spoken aloud either way. But that day, they were just no longer _there_.

That day, Draco again saw Albus as his father’s son, and for once, there was little that was hateful in it.

He knew too many fathers’ sons. He bore the title himself, and had passed it along to his own son before realising what he was doing. Draco had no disillusions that he had actually _become_ his own father, Lucius Malfoy; that was a ridiculous, self-pitying notion saved for weak moments during the night. No, he had become his own form of father, and now he was finding ways to drag his son into his selfish and tattered circle just as Lucius Malfoy had done. Just by doing what he couldn’t seem to help doing.

His father had followed the Dark Lord. Draco had his own irresistible temptations, it seemed, but all the same, they were destructive in the wrong hands.

He could see very well that Albus Potter was Harry’s son, even with the astounding Potions discrepancy. The boy would most likely surpass his father in height, but not this year. He walked the corridors instead of strolling them, had the patience of a six-year-old, proven by the fact that his cauldron went skittering across the floor of the classroom more times than it didn’t, but he also had an intense focus that fixed definitively on one thing or another and remained there until it was no longer necessary. One could feel the moment of fixation, almost an audible snap in the air when Albus Potter found the thing that he’d deemed most important. And it was scarily obvious that the approach had its effect: Albus Potter was the only Sixth Year who had mastered Apparition on the first try, and that was just one example of his magical abilities. Draco shuddered to think what the boy would have been like if he’d grown up in the situation his father had.

Albus was a Gryffindor, and had roomed with Scorpius for nearly six years. As far as Draco could tell, his son and Harry’s had never been friends, but they were acquaintances. Perhaps more, because something had suffered from Scorpius’ abrupt turn earlier that year; Draco remembered the Potter boy’s grades dropping enough to gain his attention and nearly warrant a specially tailored lecture just for Albus Severus Potter. But Scorpius had, of course, said nothing to him about a spoilt near-friendship. And watching them in the company of each other, Draco could only say that they sometimes disliked each other as vehemently as their fathers once had.

* * *

The castle felt colder than ice and utterly empty. Even the periods during holiday or before the students arrived did not feel as deathly still as this. It was as if the school had become a ghost house, full of the memories of people who had once lived and breathed there.

Draco waited with the small, untidy group of professors and Aurors— now including the distressed Marriotts— and watched as a slender figure covered the final few yards on the path from Hogsmeade with a dignity he’d nearly forgotten about, and made her way to where the rest of them stood on the lawn. She wore pressed navy-blue trousers and a long-sleeved wool jumper that zipped up to her chin. She looked at him without smiling, without any change in her expression, but Draco took her hand briefly and, after squeezing it, felt a belated but firm squeeze back.

“Harry,” he said, turning to the others, “Minerva. Everyone. This is Estelle’s birth-mother.”

Their recognition of Pansy Parkinson’s now-thinned but still dainty face was obvious. Theodore looked at her blankly for a long moment before muttering, “Of course. _Of course_.”

Gloria Marriott, a woman whose stature reached Draco’s, came forward with a tentative smile. She took Pansy’s hand in both of hers. “You’re doing well? It’s been so long…”

Pansy murmured something; Gloria nodded, looking two seconds away from succumbing to her tears, and renewed her shaking smile before moving back to her husband’s side. Surprisingly, Pansy drifted in the same direction.

Harry cleared his throat. His face was pale and looked somehow leaner. “All right. Here’s what we know.”

He proceeded to explain the disappearance of the five children in clipped, professional phrases, noting the witness accounts and the detail they’d provided. Then he went back to the initial spell work and Granger’s theory about skewed foundational magic. By the time he reached the hypothesis of why the children had been abducted, there was little need to clarify.

“It’s obvious,” Theodore said in a bitter voice. He threw his arm out, gesturing at Goyle, Pansy, and Draco. “We’ve all ties to a certain deceased megalomaniac and our children are being punished for it.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t explain Albus Potter,” Granger said carefully, glancing at Harry. “And Pansy… She wasn’t a Death Eater. We knew who they all were in the end.”

“I didn’t say anything about Death Eaters, I said we all had ties.” Theodore scowled.

“She’s right, I wasn’t a Death Eater,” Pansy spoke up, more words than Draco had heard from her in years. Her blonde ponytail twisted in the breeze and she squinted, giving her eyes a glint of past suffering. “I never got the Dark Mark. That was Dorian.”

McGonagall’s face went very pinched at that. It was Longbottom who spoke. “Dorian Craddock. Met him once.”

Pansy frowned vaguely, but did not offer anything in response.

“I think we all met him once,” Harry muttered.

Pansy shrugged. Draco wondered if he was the only one there who could tell it was her way of distracting herself from what was really churning around underneath. “He wasn’t a Death Eater either, technically. A little late to the game to get fully involved.”

“Well, he obviously got involved with you,” Theodore said flatly.

Pansy sneered at him. “Obviously.”

The look on Theodore’s face was accusatory. Draco decided it was time to turn the subject. “What matters is that we can connect all the disappearances except one. The house-elves claim the children are safe; we need to figure out where they are and how to get them out.”

“Does Estelle know she’s your daughter?” Greg Goyle asked unexpectedly. His question was curious, and Pansy turned to him. Draco saw a flush rising up her cheeks. She opened her mouth but didn’t speak at first. Finally—

“No.” There was something wounded in Pansy’s tone.

“Wonderful,” Theodore said. “Pray tell, why not?”

Pansy glared at him; Draco was reminded forcefully of their years in school together. “Suffice it to say we parted ways.”

“You and your daughter?” Theodore said snidely.

“Dorian and I!” Pansy snapped. She seemed to recall that Theodore wasn’t the only one there and turned to face the rest of them. Her cheeks had flushed again. “What’s the difference anyway? I wouldn’t have been able to go for help regardless. You and your Aurors practically blew him and his little group of rebels to the moon, didn’t you, Potter?”

Harry’s face was impassive. “You know why we did it.”

“Yes, I know, and don’t think that I don’t understand,” she answered. “But as far as you were concerned, he was dead after that! _I_ was dead. How in the world could I have gone to you for help?”

No one commented on that; Draco could see the paradox, as well as Pansy’s incredible stubbornness shining through. Her lover was presumably deceased, though she had probably known better, as there had been no body. The Aurors had considered her a Death Eater sympathiser. Better to be thought dead as well, by them and by Dorian.

And Draco knew, perhaps better than any of them, what it meant to involve one’s child in Voldemort’s cause, or the revival thereof.

“Look,” he said before Theodore and Pansy could get going again. “We’re here. We’ve got a school to ransack and plenty of intelligent people to do it. I can’t speak for any of you, but I bloody well want my son back in my arms before nightfall!”

Draco saw Harry swallow, and in the next second, he was speaking in that terse tone he’d used ever since Albus had vanished. “There are seven floors to search, so we’ll split into groups. We’ve Aurors to help us and more arriving soon. Try anything: portraits, statues, even chinks in the walls. This castle already has a lot of secrets; I’m sure there are plenty more.”

“I’m going to ask the house-elves again,” Granger said. “I’m sure I can bring them round if I just talk to them about it.”

McGonagall nodded. She gestured to Harry. “Mr Potter, I’ve something in my office that I confiscated from your eldest son several years ago. I believe it will assist us?”

Harry’s mouth quirked, Draco was sure of it. He was about to answer when a loud crack sounded just outside the group. They all jumped.

The house-elf gave a little cough, his large eyes roving skittishly from one person to the next. “Please forgive Norby’s intrusion, sirs and misses. Norby has been directed to inform the Headmistress that it is time.”

“Time for what?” McGonagall asked briskly.

The house-elf gave a visible swallow. “It is time for the mothers and fathers to find their children.”

There was such an explosion of movement that the house-elf scampered behind McGonagall’s legs, peeking out around her robe. Draco, guilty of stepping toward the elf as well, reined himself in with a rough clench of his fists. He took a breath and looked around, noticing that Theodore’s shoulders had hunched and that Harry’s face had regained its ghostly pallor.

It was Granger who finally crouched down to look the elf in the eye. “What do we have to do, Norby?” she asked quietly.

The house-elf shuffled out from behind McGonagall, kneading its hands together. He wore a long, light blue smock, clean and bound at the waist with gold curtain cord. “Norby is to tell the masters and mistresses that one parent of each child is to join him in the new doorway.”

“What new doorw—” Draco started, and then looked behind him as the elf pointed, back through the open door into the castle. As his eyes adjusted to the relative dimness, his breathing stuttered.

There was a small arch in the wall that sectioned off the Great Hall from the atrium, and it had definitely not been there before. Even more startling was that Draco knew for a fact that he should be able to see the Ravenclaw table through the arch, from where it was positioned, as well as the very end of the teachers’ table, but all he saw was a torch-lit passageway winding downward and out of sight.

The stillness of the group was complete; not one twitch, not a sound. Draco could sense them all gaping, the ones who knew the school well, at any rate. Even McGonagall couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.

Harry’s voice broke the stupor. “The children are through there?”

Norby nodded, his head bobbing in a worrisome wobble. “Harry Potter will find his son if he goes through the door.”

Harry walked to the main door and peered in, narrowing his eyes at the new passageway. Draco watched him, his stiffened shoulders, his alert stance. There was something feral there that Draco couldn’t place, riding solely on instinct, slipping between thought and into feeling. Harry’s mouth played through several expressions, all of them disconcerting. “What’s through the arch?”

Norby fidgeted much as Winky had. “Norby is… is sorry, Harry Potter. Norby is not allowed to say.”

No one moved for almost a minute. Draco could see Harry thinking, his mind turning over and over the possibilities, the dangers and of course the substantial rewards. Harry looked down at the house-elf several times, and then, like a clock ticking up to midnight, his body straightened and he turned to face them all.

“Then I’m going in,” he said. He yanked his jumper over his head and took his wand from his pocket. “Who knows how long that thing will be there?”

Granger hurried forward, stretching her hand out for his sweater. “Do you want me to Floo Ginny? That is, if you haven’t already.”

“There’s no time. She’s travelling. Should be at the Burrow whenever she gets in, but we’re not waiting. Time could be a factor here.”

They all looked at Norby, but the elf’s ears only drooped in response. The house-elf turned to Theodore next, but the man ignored him. He pulled his own wand free, glowering, and went to stand by Harry. Norby then beckoned to Goyle, bowing low as he came forward.

But Draco met the elf’s eyes. “Will they be harmed if they enter the castle?”

The house-elf did not even blink. “Professor Malfoy, sir, Norby is instructed to tell you that they will not be harmed.”

McGonagall addressed the elf then, in a tone of voice that made Draco remember dreading the days he’d not done his homework. “That is a promise to which I will hold not only you, but all of the house-elves, Norby.”

The elf dropped his eyes and nodded reverently. And then he bowed again as Draco walked past him to join the others.

Alric Marriott’s hand was on his wife’s shoulder, fingers tensed to paleness. “I’ll be the one,” he said hoarsely. But the house-elf shook his head.

“Norby is sorry, but Master Marriott cannot go. Norby is to ask for her.” He nodded past Alric and Gloria to where Pansy stood somewhat apart from the group.

Gloria’s mouth opened and she sucked in a harsh breath. Her eyes flicked from Pansy to her husband.

Pansy’s face was very hard to read. “Don’t worry, you’re still her parents,” she said, almost a whisper. “It’s only blood that we share.”

She hunched her shoulders and stepped forward. Theodore watched her come, then looked darkly at the yawning doorway and entered the castle without a word to anyone.

They made their way across the atrium toward the small arch. Granger and the rest of the group followed a little way behind. About five yards from the arch, Draco heard a gasp behind him and turned to see that Granger had stopped, still at the head of the trailing group, and had both hands up in front of her.

“There’s—” She looked around wildly. Her hands made strange gestures, almost like she was smoothing the air. “There’s some sort of shield here. Harry, we can’t seem to—”

“It’s all right, Hermione,” Harry said quietly. Draco looked at him and saw resignation all over his frame. “I suspected they wouldn’t allow you to come anyway.”

Granger didn’t answer. McGonagall and the others joined her at the invisible barrier and stood there watching them. Theodore exhaled irritably between his teeth and continued toward the flickering passageway.

The last one to cross the threshold was Harry. All five of them spun around at the sound of grinding. The wall slid quickly closed between them and the group outside. The last thing Draco saw was Granger’s anxious face.

* * *

Their footsteps and the guttering sound of the torches were almost overpowering in the narrow passage. It went down and down, a gentle slant that became steps here and there. Any inclination to speak seemed to have departed as the wall closed behind them. Draco could feel Harry at his back; he could hear the breathing of the others, the swish of Theodore’s robes and the scuff of Greg’s shoes up ahead. Pansy walked just in front of him, her head down a little, hair gleaming as she passed under each torch.

He longed to speak to her, to discern how she was feeling about all of this. But his thoughts jittered, skipping over each other. Scorpius’ face fled between them, sparking a low and constant pain in his gut. Was his son alone? Perhaps all of the children were together somewhere. Scorpius was not group-minded. He never had been, always more inclined to work on his own, to avoid the school’s naturally developing cliques even before Astoria’s departure. Draco had been able to sense superiority in his son for years; not a cruel sort, not the superiority of a snob, but rather the sense of being burdened by the other students his age, of having to correct for their faults. Draco had been the same, only his snobbery had eventually taken on a much more physical form. Scorpius, at sixteen, was still a difficult dragon egg to crack. Draco realised he had no idea how his son would react to this sort of situation, to being alone or to being with the others. All he had were his hopes of what his son would do, and very little to bolster them.

Harry cleared his throat and Draco glanced back once, and then again. The man met his gaze and held it until Draco turned away. He wondered for the first time what thoughts were cycloning through Harry’s head. He’d never seen Harry terrified, not even as a boy. Worried, yes. Scared? He liked to think so. But Harry Potter had always kept it together; whether for himself or for his companions, Draco didn’t know. Until now, Draco had never witnessed a crack in the Potter façade. Now, when he looked closely, a multitude of cracks was unmistakable.

He wondered if the others were aware of how brittle Harry’s composure was. Ah, but they were most likely pondering the horrors their own children might be facing.

It felt like hours of walking. Draco only knew that they found nothing during the trek. The corridor remained the same: sandy stone walls, ceiling and floor, dropping as it went, at times curving, but no end in sight. The torches were evenly spaced and the air was cool but not uncomfortable.

“We’ve got to be under the school,” Greg ventured suddenly. He looked back as if seeking agreement.

“Of course we are, Goyle,” Theodore said up ahead. He hadn’t stopped walking. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when you go down—”

“Theodore,” Draco said loudly. Theodore’s voice silenced, but his frame still looked rigid. Pansy’s head turned halfway, but not far enough for Draco to see her expression.

Harry said nothing.

They kept walking, further down until the passage levelled out abruptly and stayed that way. One turn, another, almost a full circle, and they spilled into a square-shaped room. There was no door on the opposite side. They stopped and stared, and finally Harry did speak.

“Picture frames,” was all he said.

There were three of them, one on each of the walls. And they were empty. Draco frowned, approaching the nearest one, and suddenly the grinding started up again. They all whirled in time to watch the passageway to the room close itself off with a heavy thud.

“Brilliant,” Theodore muttered.

Draco saw that Harry was frowning. The fingers of his right hand tapped his thigh in quick succession. Draco followed his line of sight. The wall that had closed across the opening bore a fourth empty frame. Harry approached it carefully, then pressed his palm against the upper corner of the frame. His fingers slid down an inch or two and pressed again.

“Harry, what?” Draco asked.

He didn’t get an answer. He could sense the eyes of the others on him. It made him feel like screaming that he didn’t know any more than they did. “Potter.”

“Might be a trigger.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Theodore said, and when Harry looked back, Draco caught the glint of irritation in green eyes.

“As I said up there,” Harry intoned, “try all the portraits.”

“You don’t really think they’d just open up for us, do you?” Theodore said. “It obvious that we’re in the grip of someone or something else entirely here! It hardly matters about school secrets when the castle can change things at will!”

Harry’s expression had gone toward stony. “But you’re not going to just sit there and do nothing. Are you?”

Theodore’s lips thinned. Draco saw his hands twitch. But Theodore only jerked his own wand free of his belt and stalked toward the wall opposite Harry. He began plying gently sparking spells along the outer edge of the frame there.

Greg made his way over to a third wall, and, after hesitating, Pansy went to the fourth. Draco chose the corner between Harry and Pansy. With a glance at Harry, he set to work on the joints of the walls themselves, wondering what it was he was supposed to be looking for.

 _Scorpius,_ his mind offered. _You’re looking for Scorpius._ Draco frowned in concentration. The five worked in silence save for the flutter and sizzle of magic.

“Should have been one of them,” Pansy muttered. Draco lowered his wand.

“What do you mean?”

Her mouth was bent into a grimace. “One of them, the Marriots,” she snapped. “They’re her real parents, there’s no reason I should be the one the elves sent.”

“Slight issue of blood relations,” Theodore grumbled.

“I am aware of that,” Pansy countered testily. “But she’s never even seen me before! Just say that we do find her; why in the world would she come with me? A stranger?”

Draco raised his eyebrows. “You’ll just have to explain it to her, yeah?”

“No, I don’t want to explain it to her!” Pansy shouted. All four of them stared at her, wands motionless. Pansy’s eyes had gone a little glassy.

“Panse—”

“Salazar, I was just as good as a bloody Death Eater! Her father was a damned Dark Lord revivalist! What good would it ever do to explain that to her?” Pansy’s voice rose even higher, her feet carrying her back and forth across the room in a series of frenzied strides.

“She didn’t need this,” she cried. Her small hand flew as she gestured. “She didn’t need to know she’d spawned from _this_.”

Draco’s throat wadded itself shut. He stared at the friend of his childhood, trying to swallow and finally working one through what was lodged in his chest. He thought of his son, a beautiful baby brought into the world and lifted into his shaking arms. “Well,” he muttered, rising from his crouch and pacing the room. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he wasn’t looking at her. “I’m glad I can still depend on your honest opinion, Pansy.”

Her answer sounded a little bit desperate. “That isn’t what I meant, Draco, you know that isn’t what I meant!”

“Yes. Of course it isn’t.”

“What did you mean, then, Parkinson?” Theodore too had risen and was facing her, fists clenched tightly at his sides. “I ended up having a daughter, too. Did you know?”

“And what’s your point?” Pansy returned warily, and Theodore’s anger burst through with a sudden snap.

“That my daughter is aware that she’s mine, unlike some people’s children! What did you do? Leave her on a fucking doorstep?”

“Shut up!” Pansy shouted. “Shut up, you have no idea what I had to deal with! You know nothing about it, so just shut your mouth, Nott!”

Theodore stalked up to her, and though she turned away, he snarled right into her ear, his cheeks bright with colour. “I had to deal with the same damn things, Parkinson! We, we all did! At least we didn’t disappear and leave our _spawn_ in someone else’s lap!”

She spun around as Draco had known she would, because some things never died and Pansy’s temper was one of them. “Your spouse hadn’t threatened your life. Had she, Theodore? Had she come searching for you wherever you went? Oh, that’s right, she died instead, and you and your precious daughter, did you live comfortable lives then? No, I think we all know how well you and Lavinia get along now! No father could know _less_ about the child he raised!”

“Enough!” Harry shouted. Draco’s entire body tensed. He could feel the power trapped behind the word, barely netted and just waiting to be released. Harry had pulled his wand; his arm was rock-steady as he pointed it at them, but Draco knew the wand was unnecessary. Harry Potter had enough power coiled in his body to fling them all into the walls of the room if he so chose. Pansy, Theodore, and Greg blinked at Harry.

“Will you please focus?” Harry snapped. His wand dropped and he flung his other hand out toward the wall nearest him. “Your children are in here somewhere. _My_ child is in here somewhere, and I swear on Albus Dumbledore’s grave, if I don’t find him in time because of your inane fighting—” Harry stopped and drew a breath. Draco watched as his body shook. He felt the overwhelming urge to reach out. Grip Harry’s shoulder.

Greg turned away. His cheeks looked very pink. “He’s right. There’s got to be a way out. Come on then, or I’ll find a way on without any of you and then I’ll be the hero with all of your kids safely in tow, worshipping me.”

“Not likely, Greg,” Theodore ground out, but he did step away from Pansy and move back to his wall of choice. His wand tip sparked orange at the spell he muttered and he began to painstakingly trace his way over the stones.

Pansy wordlessly returned to her wall and did the same.

Draco was still looking at Harry. The lines around the other man’s mouth were visible, his lips ringed in white. He was breathing hard, but it wasn’t until his eyes met Draco’s that Draco saw the fear in them, buried under layers of efficiency and irritation. Harry was terrified for his son. Terrified they wouldn’t find him in time for… what? The doom that loomed over them all had never been given substance or even a name. But their kids were missing, locked somewhere in a school that had rocked right off its hinges years ago, and Harry Potter wasn’t sure he could fight this enemy. That observation was scarier than almost everything else thus far.

Draco was still standing close enough to reach for Harry when the sickening grinding shattered the quiet yet again. The floor trembled violently. Draco had time to see Pansy spin around, wand out and eyes wide, before the stones in the corners to her right and left jutted right out of their places, forming new walls, sliding between her and the rest of them faster than Draco could think.

“Pansy!” he shouted, lunging toward her. Her mouth opened, but the new dividers ground together with a horrid crunch, slicing off his view. He spun, ready to shout at Harry to help him, but another set of stones was racing forward from a third corner toward the newly formed barricade in the centre. Theodore took two running strides, but the moving wall slammed shut with him on the other side. The grinding grew even louder; Draco looked the other way just in time to see that Greg had been cut off from him as well.

He was still gaping at where his friends had been when Harry lurched forward and grabbed his arm. “Come here,” he muttered, pulling Draco to him and turning them away from the wall they were closest to. Draco sucked in a breath, hearing his heart pounding in both ears. Feeling the answering thud of Harry’ pulse against the length of his arm. Harry’s other hand rose and gripped Draco’s elbow, and they stood, watching the walls.

But the grinding had ceased. The newly formed room was tiny and triangular, and full of the sound of their quickened breathing.

Draco hunched his shoulders. Harry’s body heat beat into him like the warmth of firelight. “Potter—”

“Didn’t want it to separate us, too,” Harry broke in. Draco exhaled and shut his eyes, feeling dizzy. The tight heat where Harry’s hand clutched around his arm was a steadying presence. Draco fought against returning the grip for about a second, and then gave in and clamped his fingers over Harry’s. The other man’s chest expanded against his back as they breathed.

“What in Salazar’s name just happened?” Draco whispered. He felt Harry shake his head wordlessly. They both stared at the new walls not four feet from them.

But the grinding did not start up again. Eventually Harry’s hands loosened and dropped away. Harry stepped back, and Draco felt very cold. “You think it’s hurt them?” he asked, trying to find some sort of centre.

“I… have no idea,” was Harry’s answer.

Draco let himself stand there dumbly for enough time to inhale once, and then he roused himself and went to the wall. He reached out and touched the stones with the tips of his fingers. Behind him, Harry stirred but said nothing. Draco could relate; he’d half expected the wall to move again when he touched it. He turned, surveying the new space.

“Well,” he said finally, “the room was square, and this is a triangle. If the same situation applies to all of us, then most likely they’re each in the same sort of space we are. And they’re fine.”

Harry’s nod of agreement was long in coming, but when it did, it was solid.

Draco noted the space between the two of them. He had to stop himself from closing the distance. Instead, he compromised, walking past Harry to study the other wall, now the only one that was different from the others.

“Just a bloody frame,” he muttered. There should have been a portrait in it; the room was nothing but a small abandoned gallery, or had been before the walls moved.

“Why separate them, but not the two of us?” Harry said. Draco half-turned, but realised he had no idea how to answer.

Then he did turn. “You’re suggesting somebody’s got a specific purpose for us. Each of us.”

Harry only looked at him. Draco’s chest tightened a bit.

“Look, just—” He stopped himself before his words became a shout. “Stop staring at me like that, Potter. Like the world’s about to implode. It’s fucking unsettling.”

Harry’s face flickered through several expressions, all of them dark. He moved past Draco to the wall, bumping his shoulder as he went. “Draco, if you’re not unsettled by now, then I don’t know why you’re even here.”

He scrutinised the frame, his nose wrinkling. Draco watched him as he pored over every inch of one side, feeling around the edge with his fingers, kneading and pressing.

“What?” Draco said.

“Might still be something here.”

“As you said, it’s an empty frame.”

Harry looked at him over his shoulder. “Look, the elves… Norby made it sound like… I don’t know. A test. Something like. And I can’t speak for you, but being separated like this takes me right back to the bloody Triwizard Tournament, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just exhaust the possibility and then we can go on pondering the walls.”

The only words rising to Draco’s lips tasted terribly acerbic. He swallowed and reached out until, against his better judgment, he could lean against the wall that bore the empty frame. Merlin, he couldn’t think, and then suddenly he was thinking too fast, only to search his mind and find it blank of anything that mattered. He felt as if he were going insane, and all the while his son’s name droned over and over in his head as if someone were whispering it just behind him.

He had no idea what was happening to his child. What wasn’t happening to him. Maybe there was something he, Draco, wasn’t doing, and as he sat here not doing it, the danger to his son increased.

Harry’s fingers continued their slow play along the borders of the frame, now inching their way across the top. Every so often, Harry would stop and tap his wand at a particular point, mutter a spell, wait for a moment, and then go on.

“Here,” Draco snapped, stepping into the space Harry was occupying and pushing him away. “It’ll be a magical catch, that I can tell you.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Yes,” Draco said stubbornly. Harry only moved out of his way and let him take over. Draco went meticulously over the outside of the frame, then the inside rim, then the middle. Each corner. Back to the beginning with another spell.

He was just starting to feel like he was getting nowhere, not to mention the premonition that Harry was about to push _him_ out of the way, when something on the left side of the frame gave a tiny click, a hiss… and the wall ground open. Draco jumped back and hit Harry, who was standing right behind him.

He met Harry’s eyes, and for a moment, Harry only looked back at him. Then his eyebrows rose and he gestured mock-gallantly for Draco to enter the new passageway.

* * *

 **In the Room**

 

“Potter, your dad wasn’t a Death Eater in secret, was he? Or maybe he was even Voldemort in disguise?”

Scorpius gave a frustrated growl. “Would you pack it in, Goyle?”

“Oh, you pack it in,” Lavinia grumbled. “Sick of your bloody whinging.”

“You can shut up, too, Nott!” Scorpius spat.

“They’re all looking for you, you know.”

Scorpius turned. Albus Potter stood in the middle of the room, his clothing rumpled and his hands in his pockets, looking right at him. His right shoulder rose in a half-shrug. “My dad, I mean. And yours.”

“My dad.” Scorpius eyed the other boy.

Albus nodded. Shrugged again. “Yeah.”

Scorpius was certain his roommate’s cheeks had coloured, but he couldn’t be sure, the room was so dim.

“Look,” interrupted Aubrey. His expression looked contemplative and a little excited. “Look, if your dads are both looking… then it stands to reason they may’ve brought the rest of our parents. My father, maybe even my mum, but I doubt it. Lavinia’s dad.”

Lavinia raised her head, but kept her mouth shut.

“What I mean is, if they’re all looking, then they’re going to find us. They know this school better than most. Sooner or later, they’ll figure out where we are.”

The room grew quiet in the wake of Aubrey’s words. Scorpius found himself staring at Albus, watching as Albus watched him.

He turned away before his own flush could show. “Fuck if I care,” he muttered.

But of course, Albus Potter had never responded to him as everyone else did. “Well, you should care,” the other boy said flatly. “Your dad’s worried out of his mind about you.”

Scorpius spun around and found himself almost on top of Albus: his roommate had moved closer. Scorpius shoved him. “Still think you know how my dad feels about me, do you? Always trying to make everyone as happy as you are! Maybe you should see to your own dad before you talk about mine!”

Albus’ face went very white. “If that was some sort of veiled insult about my family, Malfoy, I suggest you take it back, now.”

Scorpius sneered. “Or what?”

“Just shut up!” Aubrey yelled. “Merlin, you both are so fucking annoying!”

“Stay out of this, Goyle, or—”

And then, the room was full of light.

Lavinia gave a little gasp and stumbled to her feet. She nearly knocked Albus over as she ran into him. Scorpius spun around and saw Estelle still cowering in the corner. Before he could think about it, he reached a hand out and hauled her to her feet, pulling her into the centre of the room. A low rushing sound flooded Scorpius’ ears, as if multiple breezes were curling through the chamber.

“It is time,” said a deep voice.

They all jumped. Estelle clutched Scorpius’ arm so tightly it hurt.

“The Slytherin is mine,” hissed another voice, icy as snow. It seemed to come from the very walls.

On all sides of them, the empty frames began to flood rapidly with colour. And then, a third voice, low and lilting, and female.

“Hello, children.”

* * *

 **Draco**

 

Draco smacked his hand hard on the frame as the wall that bore it closed again over the blank bricked-in surface it concealed. “Fuck!”

“Calm down,” Harry said from the other side of the room. “There are two more frames here. I’m nearly done with this one.”

The pattern was simple, and more than infuriating. For whatever reason, the frames wouldn’t open under Harry’s wand, even though Draco could swear he often performed the exact same spells. And once Harry had given up, it took Draco anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour to find the proper catch on each frame in each room, only to be disappointed by the bricked-in doorways they revealed. It was a maze, of sorts. Every open passage they did find led them to a similar room with empty frames on its walls. Every opening spell was different, but all of the frames eventually opened.

Not fast enough, however. Draco’s jaw hurt from how hard he was clenching it, and his shoulders were stiff with the pain of tensing. When his mind cleared of thought every so often, it only fell prey to the fear that he was not getting any closer to Scorpius. They were just winding around and around the depths of the castle, going deeper and deeper—

“Talk to me,” Draco said before he could think better of it. He ground his teeth together and began the spell on the frame Harry had just left.

“Didn’t think you wanted to hear much of what I’ve got to say,” was Harry’s eventual answer.

Draco sighed and turned to glare at his companion. “Tell me something. I don’t care what it is, just… Damn it, Potter, I can feel the minutes ticking past. Talk. Something I don’t know yet about you.”

“Well, either my wand is faulty, or you have a gift for secret magical locks that I don’t possess.”

“I said something I don’t know.”

Harry sighed too and settled his wand flat in his palm. He stayed silent for so long that Draco all but gave up. But then his voice carried, low and somewhat forced. “I put my memory of dying into the Pensieve.”

It was enough to halt Draco’s progress. He looked over at Harry. “You did?”

Harry nodded.

Draco studied his face, but could not read much of anything there. It was as if a veil had gone down between him and whatever Harry’s intentions were. “Why?”

Harry’s eyes hung on Draco a little too long, and then he snorted, turning his head and smirking. “Because I wanted it out of my head. But we all found out how pointless that endeavour was.”

Draco couldn’t quite look away. The idea of having a memory with that sort of power bouncing around in one’s head, in one’s dreams… But could it really be more overwhelming than the memory of attempting to kill another person? Draco had no idea. It infuriated him that he had even this small inkling of it.

Harry was watching him sidelong; his cheeks paled noticeably and he looked away again. “Keep going.”

Draco turned back to the frame and touched his wand to another spot. But instead of a spell, what came out of Draco’s mouth was, “What was it like?”

A horrible thing to ask; even Draco’s short temper could not climb over that hurdle. He half expected Harry to snarl at him, swear, call him something he wouldn’t be able to deny.

Harry didn’t yell. He didn’t say anything for so long again that Draco reconciled himself to no answer. But then—

“Wasn’t fair,” he whispered.

Draco looked at him. Harry was staring at the frame, his eyes wide and fixed. The tendons in his neck were very tight.

“I wanted them to know,” Harry ground out. “To feel how fucked I was. How… how…”

“Helpless,” Draco murmured.

It was as if he’d broken through a dam.

“Why was it one person’s responsibility?” Harry cried. “Why was it _my_ responsibility? I was a bloody kid! I didn’t even have a say in the matter! And I hope to Merlin they never find out what it really feels like to be asked for that sacrifice, but nothing else is ever going to show them what was given up in the name of peace! _Who_ was given up!”

Draco could see the colour sweeping back into Harry’s face, a hot flush that rushed down his throat and under his collar. Draco swallowed; he knew there weren’t words that would soothe this pain. There was only commiseration of a different kind, the kind that said, _I never died. But I nearly caused death. I understand._

Harry’s hands trembled at his sides. His shoulders rose and fell. “But I…” He pursed his lips and shut his eyes. “Now I don’t want them to know. I don’t want them to see what I faced. What we faced. I want to keep my children’s innocence for as long as I can.”

Harry Potter, whose childhood had been stolen from him by both his caregivers and those who later swore to protect him, considered himself responsible for a similar crime. Draco looked away, eyes burning. What of his own childhood, naïve and brainwashed? His final summer of the war, cowering in his once-safe home while the monster they’d let through the door slunk through their rooms? That night on the tower, when someone had to die before his eyes and practically under his own wand?

The survivors had treated the sadness of the war, but very few had looked for the anger afterward, the fury that remained over what could not be helped any longer. And their children, the only innocents they’d thought were left, had never been innocent at all: they’d been plagued by their parents’ successes and failures during the war, and by the emotional baggage that came with it. By other people’s emotional vengeance.

“Can’t change the past,” he said quietly. Harry’s head rose. Draco could feel his gaze. He took a deep breath and let it out. “We are who and what we are. What we were.”

Draco felt a touch on his shoulder. “Not always,” Harry said.

Draco looked at him, but Harry had turned back to the frame, his face empty of its former fervour. Draco raised his wand again and began another set of spells. He worked in silence for some time, and then the blessed sound of a click met Draco’s ears, and he exhaled.

The wall slid aside with a scraping noise. Draco felt an incredible burst of heat; searing light beamed into his eyes and he flinched away, raising a hand to shield his face.

When he forced his eyes open again, the only thought that came to him was _fire_.

A deafening, shrieking roar ripped into his ears. Draco jumped away from the opening, staggering into Harry and tumbling them both to the ground. Heat blasted over them like a furnace, heavy and suffocating, smelling of sulfur and charred stone. Draco’s heart leaped sideways; he choked and scrambled even further back, pushing Harry as hard as he could. All he could think was to get away from the flames and what was roiling in them. He was aware that Harry’s hand had wrapped around his wrist, fingers digging deeply into his skin.

“What?” Harry yelled over the cacophony. “What’s—”

“Fiendfyre,” Draco gasped. He could taste the familiar, nightmarish scorching in his throat, the flavours of copper and rust, smoke as thick as tar. Harry looked past him and Draco saw his eyes go wide, the red and yellow and orange light slicing over his face. He forced himself to turn and look.

Dragons and hideous snakes of molten flame wove through white licks of fire that shot ceiling-ward. Terrifying birds with parched wings and eyes as red as blood screamed smoke, diving over gargoyle-twisted creatures Draco couldn’t make out. It was as if he’d fallen into his dreams of years ago, where the birds had plucked at his eyes, sulfuric talons ripping through him as his skin dripped right off his bones. The heat was incredible. Draco grabbed Harry’s arms, hoisted them both to their feet, and flung himself and the other man toward the farthest corner, where shadow still dwelt out of the firelight’s reach.

The roaring did not diminish. If anything, it grew louder.

Harry stared up at him, light playing over his features. Draco coughed, unable to look away, seeing only the vibrant green of Harry’s eyes and the memories playing within them. They both remembered this much too well. Harry drew a shaking breath as if to speak.

With the same scraping sound, the wall closed again, only this time, there was a long, ugly scorch mark where it had parted, the stones blackened all the way from floor to ceiling. The silence was jarring. Draco’s ears rang.

“Oh, god,” came Harry’s whisper. “Oh, god, what is that still doing in the school?”

Draco began to breathe again suddenly, a harsh rasp that had his arms buckling. He caught himself just before he fell on top of Harry’s legs, and braced his shoulder against the wall beside his companion, facing away, shaking and shivering and trying to catch his breath. A hand gripped his arm, slid over to his back.

“Are you all right?” Harry asked hoarsely.

Draco couldn’t answer. He couldn’t think. All he could see were the creatures in those billowing plumes, the black bubbling of the walls and the smoke choking the ceiling. He heard Harry move, the shuffle of his shoes as he pushed himself upright, and then a second hand joined the first and both held onto his shoulders tightly, thumbs moving in slow strokes over the fabric of his shirt.

Draco swallowed. His sight was blurry with heat-induced tears; he blinked until the drops slid off his eyelashes and fell onto his arms and fingers. When he could move, he wiped his face with one hand, shut his eyes, and leaned his forehead against the cool stones of the wall beside him.

“Draco,” Harry said softly.

“I’m fine,” he managed. “Fine.”

Harry said nothing for a long while, only continued to massage Draco’s shoulders. Draco breathed in deeply and forced himself to let it out slowly; he hadn’t felt the approach of a panic attack like this in many, many years, but his body still remembered how to stave it off as if he’d had one only yesterday. The images of the fire creatures licked at his memory like the flames they were made of, the sinister heat of a near-forgotten burn.

“Do you…” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Do you think it will leave the room?”

Harry’s thumbs stopped their circles. “You can’t think like that. Winky said the children are safe, that they wouldn’t be hurt. You have to trust her.”

“Why?” Draco turned around, not quite ready for it and coughing as a result. “When she won’t tell us where they are or help us get them back?”

“I’ve learned that trusting house-elves is often the smartest thing you can do,” was all Harry said, but the look on his face was suddenly very sad. Draco nodded. He pushed himself to his feet, using the wall. Harry’s hands slid from his shoulders.

“Well, one thing’s certain,” Draco muttered. “That’s not the right way. Better try the other wall.”

Harry nodded this time, letting Draco pass in front of him to the wall opposite the fire room, the only frame they hadn’t tried. Draco started at the edge and began to work across the top, tapping with his wand, the tip emitting orange sparks with each touch.

“You’re exhausted,” came Harry’s voice from behind him.

“And you’re absolutely top of your game, Potter,” Draco returned. “Are you just going to stand there?”

Harry came forward and set to work on the right edge of the frame, but his eyes kept flicking to Draco, until finally Draco stopped and faced him.

“I know,” he said. “I know I’m exhausted. I know you are, too. But I can’t just lie down and sleep, Harry. Not when he’s still in here somewhere. Are they being fed? Do they have water? Warmth? We’ve absolutely no idea.”

“And we may do them more harm than good if we aren’t clear-headed,” Harry answered. Draco had no argument for that, as much as he wanted one. He tightened his jaw and turned back to the frame.

After what felt like ages, a tap of Draco’s wand sent the wall sliding sideways, revealing a long, narrow passageway. Draco met Harry’s eyes and stepped forward, wand ready. But nothing sprang up to block them; no fire flickered to life. Draco made for the end of the corridor, where he was sure an abrupt turn to the right or left was hiding another room with framed walls. But he only found a solid stone end to the passage. He heard Harry stop behind him.

“No frame here.”

They must have… made a wrong turn somewhere. Overlooked something. Draco wanted to cry. They’d been so thorough, they’d checked everything, absolutely everything, and now—

“Then we’ll have to go back,” Draco growled, turning… only to hear that horrible grinding again. The corridor turned into a tiny cubic room, stones slipping into place, sealing off the room from which they’d come. He gaped at the wall. “What—”

“I’m afraid you are not ready,” a resonant voice sounded around them. “Your test has not been satisfactorily completed.”

“What?” Draco cried. Harry’s eyes were wide, his mouth slack. He turned aimlessly in a circle, staring at the walls of their prison. Draco flung himself at the wall that had closed in behind them, smacking it with both fists. “Open it! Let me back in! Open the fucking wall!”

For an instant, he thought he’d succeeded: the grinding came to life once more. But this time Draco was shaken to his knees as the small room twisted and heaved, and finally, finally opened up on three ends, sending them tumbling into fresh air and wide space and many, many voices.

“Harry?” cried one of them. “Harry!”

Someone ran toward them. Draco looked up dizzily and found Granger there, stumbling to her knees and grabbing hold of Harry’s shoulders. Others were approaching behind her. Draco shook his head, and then Granger’s hands were clutching his upper arms instead. “What’s happened?” she cried. “Did you find the others? Did you find Al and Scorpius?”

Draco couldn’t find his tongue. His belly felt sick, churning from the rocking of the room. He lurched forward and someone caught him, and everyone was speaking at once, voices he knew, voices he didn’t, crying, someone yelling at someone else from further off. He pushed his hands against his ears, trying to think, to understand where he was.

There were people, lots and lots of legs, wandering agitatedly back and forth. Draco sagged and his saviour let him go. It wasn’t until he was leaning wearily on one arm on the floor that he really figured out where he was, who he was with.

“Threw us out,” Harry said weakly from beside Draco. “It threw us back… back here.”

“Yes, you’re in the front atrium,” Granger said. Her face was lined with strain, hair haphazard in a halo about her head. “What happened to you two? Where are the boys, did you see them?”

“See them? No.” Harry’s voice sounded haggard and confused. Draco tried to swallow and just barely managed it.

“You didn’t see…? But I thought—” Granger cut herself off abruptly and turned, craning her head over her shoulder.

“Failed the test,” Harry rasped.

“But Goyle…” Her voice slipped. “Harry, Draco, you… you didn’t find your sons?”

“Hermione,” Harry said, much more clearly. “Why do you keep asking us where they are?”

At first Draco thought it was an addled, stupid question. Until he saw Granger’s eyes. They were wide and haunted, dangerously wet. His heart gave a jerk in his chest. “What?” he hissed at her.

Wordlessly, she turned and pointed. Draco followed her gesture and made out a tangle of limbs by the stairwell. It looked inhuman, extraordinarily odd, so he blinked. And realised he was looking at Greg Goyle, sitting on the bottom steps.

Hugging his son Aubrey tightly to his chest, and being hugged in return.

“Oh,” Harry breathed. Draco stared dully. His mind was a disturbing blank.

“They came back a little bit ago,” Granger said tremulously. “He said it was a test, and… and I assumed…”

It was Harry’s pale face that shocked Draco into movement, the lost look in the other man’s eyes. Draco forced himself to his feet and turned, stumbling back to the wall that had spit them out. He slammed his fists into it, hitting and hitting until his knuckles broke apart and his fingers became slick. Draco heaved himself at the wall, the same one they had entered through hours ago and the one that was now closed off. “Give him back, you fucking bastards, give me my son—!”

Arms wrapped tightly around his waist, hauling him away from the wall. “Draco, stop!” It was Harry, using his whole body to subdue Draco, arms crisscrossed over his chest and hands gripping his shirt. One foot tangled around one of his legs, and Draco almost tripped. “Draco!”

“No!” he cried. “Scorpius is still in there, he’s still there, let me go! I have to get to him, let go of me!”

“You have to calm down first! We’ll figure it out, Draco—”

 _“No!”_ Draco wrenched away from Harry, but the other man held on. He kicked outward at the wall, scratched his fingers down the stones. Sobs heaved in his chest, Scorpius dead behind some wall, writhing in Fiendfyre, he’d failed his son again, oh gods, oh merciful Merlin, _please_ —

The last word he heard from Harry was, “Stupefy!”

* * *

He woke in a bed, in a darkened room. The mattress cradled him closely and the duvet was tucked around his shoulders. Draco blinked groggily, curling his hand into the pillow beneath his head. Realising it smelled like him. Realising he was in his own bedroom.

He turned over with a groan. Someone whispered, “Lumos,” and a soft light flared. Draco winced even at the small spark. His head felt hollow, but something in it pounded faintly. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the return of the darkness for just a little longer. Footsteps approached the bed and Draco forced his eyes open again.

“Potter,” he growled.

Harry stood, holding his wand at his side. His shirt was not the one he’d been wearing; this one was clean, no trace of ash or dirt. The light spilled strangely over his right side, making him look as if he were only half there. “How are you feeling?”

Draco yanked away from Harry’s reaching hand, sending a jolt of vertigo through his skull. But it wasn’t enough to pull him down again; he flung the duvet away with a furious thrust and pushed himself to his feet. When he turned around, Harry was still looking at him from the opposite side of the bed.

“You fucker,” Draco hissed.

Harry’s face went from concerned to passive. “Don’t start, Draco. I couldn’t get through to you.”

“So you incapacitated me?” Draco grabbed the nearest pillow and flung it hard at Harry. It glanced off his hip and Harry stepped back. His brows converged into a hard line.

“You were in no shape to go on,” Harry said through gritted teeth. “The way you were going, you’d have hurt yourself. Look at your hands.”

Draco didn’t bother; the skin over his knuckles tingled with the recent use of healing spells. He stalked slowly around the bed, and Harry watched him come, lowering his chin.

“You had no right!” Draco snapped. “I’ll decide when I’m through, not you!”

He jerked a hand up to grab Harry’s shirt, to pull, to yank and tear. Harry caught his wrist in a firm grip and held on. “Draco,” he said warningly, “you were bloody exhausted. You could barely stand! There was no way you were going back in until you’d rested. You should have seen yourself going at that wall, I was sure you’d broken your hands!”

“I’ll break my hands if I damn well want to!” Draco tore his wrist free of Harry’s fingers and staggered backward. “My son is still missing! Do you know how much time we’ve lost?”

“Two hours,” Harry answered. “And my son hasn’t turned up either.”

Draco stood there heaving, glaring at Harry in the weird light. Harry’s face shivered; he pulled his gaze away, flicked his wand, and lit the torches along the walls with a sudden flare. Draco’s teeth felt like they were about to disintegrate, his jaw was clenched so hard.

Two hours. He’d been senseless for two fucking hours, and Harry bloody Potter had probably sat right in the room’s only chair and watched him be senseless. “You made my decisions for me.”

“Draco,” Harry growled, “you needed to rest. You’d been awake for over thirty hours. Your thinking was going to shite, and your magic would have bloody well followed it!”

“And you may have sacrificed our children for a fucking nap!”

Harry’s eyes closed and suddenly the weariness on his face was as clear as glass, weighing him down. “Don’t you think I know that?”

Draco chewed his lip. Something deep inside told him Harry was right, he was being irrational, he had been irrational back in the atrium. Harry was an Auror, he knew better than most what toll stress took on a person. But the rest of Draco wasn’t prepared to give in, to let himself sink into the distress that waited below, the guilt and helplessness ready to well up and drown everything else. Anger had long been the only thing keeping it at bay, and Draco’d had a lot of practice using the tools at his disposal.

“Get out of my way,” he snapped. But Harry didn’t. His body stiffened. Draco could practically feel his power radiating off of him.

“We need to sit down and figure out what options we have now.”

“I know my fucking options, Potter!” Draco cast around for his wand, located it on his bedside table, and snatched it up. He pointed it directly at Harry’s face. “I have to find him. I have to find Scorpius. Now, get out of my way.”

Harry didn’t even flinch. He stared down the tip of Draco’s wand with a cold frown on his face. “You’re going to curse me?”

“If I have to.” Draco’s fingers trembled.

“Draco.” Harry’s tone was low. “We need to regroup. Think. Plan our next step. Then we’ll go back in, but not before. We need to talk to Goyle and find out what happened to him. How he was able to get Aubrey back.”

“There’s no time!” Draco shouted. “There’s no fucking time, Potter! I need to find Scorpius now!”

He heard his own voice crack, but it was too late to retrieve the words, to muffle the sound. He could feel Harry watching him, seeing and hearing all of it, but he couldn’t decide if he cared. Until Harry moved toward him, and Draco could see the hem of his shirt and the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Draco’s wand hand dropped to his side.

“Draco.” It was somewhere between a plea and a sigh. _Move back,_ Draco’s mind whispered, but he could feel body heat that wasn’t coming from him, and even if it was a phantom sensation, it clipped at Draco’s breath like fingers on the strings of a harp.

Harry did not come any closer. He was close enough. “What happened?” he asked quietly.

“You were there,” Draco managed. “My son was taken from me.”

“I know. Tell me the rest.”

Draco’s head shot up, and this time he did back away. Harry’s eyes were fixed on him, the pressure of his gaze a cold spike through the haze. “There is no rest,” Draco snarled.

“What happened between you and your son, Draco?” There was a soft instability to the words, as if Harry wasn’t sure he should be allowed to ask that sort of question.

As far as Draco was concerned, he wasn’t allowed.

“Surely you know, having raised not one but two boys! Teenagers! They can be such arses, can’t they?”

“That’s what’s happening now,” Harry said. “Tell me what happened before.”

“I fucking slept around on my wife!” Draco shouted. The most hateful sneer he’d ever felt himself give twisted his face. “You wanted to know, Potter? _That’s_ what happened.”

Harry’s frown was more pronounced as he stepped forward. “Why are you calling me that again?” Unforgiving, if ever Draco had heard it. Harry’s hand descended onto his shoulder. “Draco, we’re going to find him.”

Draco smacked his hand away and moved back. “Fuck you, that wasn’t what I was talking about. Change the fucking subject…”

“Draco.”

“You want to know what else? It was a man I slept with. I cheated on my mentally unbalanced wife with another man, and she found me out. And my son, our son, witnessed the whole thing! His mother trying to kill his father with the fucking ballroom lamp, all over a useless mistake, and he saw it. He saw it, Potter! He watched his life fall apart from the first landing on the stairs. I don’t know if you know what that’s like, Harry, but I do. I watched Voldemort rip my life in half from the very same landing, and it didn’t feel nearly as horrible as it felt to look up there and see Scorpius’ face the night Astoria found out. And then to see his face again when his mother walked out on him? _Who_ exactly do you think Astoria sees whenever she looks at her son’s face?”

Harry’s countenance was full of compassion, and it only drove Draco’s fury higher. He stalked up to Harry and got right in his face. “She sees a boy who looks exactly like the man who ruined her bloody life! The worst of it is that Scorpius had no part in any of it!”

“And yet he’s suffering for it,” was Harry’s reply.

“Fuck you, Harry! Your family hasn’t fallen to pieces. You made a clean, happy break, you got away before you could screw everything up, and you certainly didn’t do it over a meaningless—” The words froze on their way out, chased by utter mortification. He felt his face heating.

Harry reached out and clasped his arms with both hands, pulling him closer even as Draco tried to put distance between them. “Draco,” he murmured, “it meant something to you.”

“Stop talking, Potter.”

But he didn’t. “You may not have much of an opinion of me, but I understand you well enough to know that you don’t do things for the hell of it. Little things, maybe. But you’ve never done something so life-altering just for the hell of it.”

Draco stared at Harry, breathing hard, hearing how right and wrong his words were. Yet, still unable to argue any of it. He had no idea how to say what needed to be said.

“It’s time to let this heal.” Harry’s face was inches away. “Time to let yourself heal, and your son. If you don’t heal yourself, how can you ever expect him to follow? It meant enough to you to change your entire life. Don’t drown yourself in a single mistake, Draco.”

He couldn’t help it: he reached up, cinched his hand around Harry’s collar, and pulled. “Don’t you tell me what my mistake was! Gods, you— You’re perfect, even now! Even with a split family, even as a pouf, you are perfect. I used to look at you walking down Diagon and think, he has everything, there isn’t a thing he doesn’t have!”

“There are lots of things I don’t have!” Harry hissed. “Why in hell do you think my life is perfect?”

“Because you get what you want! You step forward and there it is waiting for you, and then you have it! Do you think I wanted _him?_ Salazar, Harry, I didn’t want him! That man didn’t matter to me at all, and I sacrificed everything for nothing!”

Harry’s grip on his arms tightened to the point of pain. “Well, what the hell do you want, then, Draco? Figure it out, and don’t pretend it’s meaningless! That’s the only way you’re going to have it. When it’s offered, you have to take it, and you have to mean it!”

Draco clenched his fingers once, and then pulled Harry to him until their lips crushed together. Harry’s mouth opened in a gasp, and Draco kissed him, harder than he ever had that single misaligned night, tasted Harry’s tongue and his lips and his teeth, his whole mouth, his breath as it rushed from him. Harry made a stilted sound deep in his throat and pulled himself away, breathing hard. Draco had time to look, to meet Harry’s eyes for an instant, and then Harry tugged him close again, tilted his head, and kissed him roughly. Deeply.

He couldn’t seem to move on, past that kiss. Draco’s mind went blank without much of a fight; he could feel Harry’s front pressed against his own and the firm weight of Harry’s arms clasped around his back, fingers splayed into stars of bright heat on his shoulder and spine. One of Harry’s hands bunched in the loose fabric of his shirt, pulling the last of it free from the waistline of his trousers. Draco threaded his hand through shaggy locks and clutched them between his fingers. Fisted his hands. Bumped his nose against Harry’s cheek. Tongued Harry’s mouth more closely to his. He had no idea what Harry tasted like. Just dark heat and motion, but mostly the heat, hitting him right in the chest and trembling there like a firecracker waiting to ignite.

Then Harry’s hand slid down, rubbing past his shirt over the soft skin of his lower back and clutching there, fingers dipping under the line of his belt. Draco moaned and the kiss broke. Harry’s lips touched his chin, then his throat, then his lips again, right at the corner. Draco couldn’t recall making a conscious decision, just knowing that Harry’s body heat was beating through his clothing and he _wanted_ it. He gripped Harry’s collar and tugged, and the shirt slipped backward, straining buttons, baring Harry’s throat. Draco frantically worked the buttons free with the fingers of one hand, pulling Harry’s shirt wide, wider, finally shoving it back over one of his arms and palming the warm expanse of his shoulder. He pressed himself against Harry’s bared chest, groping down until his hand slipped into the concave heat of Harry’s side just beneath his arm.

Harry shivered. His mouth opened, hot and panting at Draco’s neck, and Draco thought, _Not enough._

He shut his eyes and fumbled downward until the hard metal of a zipper touched his fingers. With one pull, it was down, and Harry had gone still except for staccato breathing.

“Draco?” he whispered. Their faces were very close. Draco couldn’t find the power to look up. And then he did, and met Harry’s eyes. Opened Harry’s trousers and slid his hand into his pants.

Harry shuddered again and his arm squeezed tight around Draco’s waist. He stepped backward, pulling them both. Draco checked him, moving sideways until one nudge was all it took to push Harry onto the mussed bedspread, flat on his back with knees apart, blinking up at Draco from behind his glasses.

Every limb shaking, Draco climbed over him on hands and knees. He reached up and removed Harry’s glasses, tossing them up toward the pillows. The look in Harry’s uncovered eyes was almost too intense; Draco went back to Harry’s trousers and tugged the waistband down over his hips, revealing white briefs and the pale skin of his thighs. He bent and kissed Harry’s chest, laving with his tongue, and then hands were on his face, lifting him away.

“You’re all right.” It was a little bit of a question, a little bit of a statement. Two lines had appeared between Harry’s brows. Draco nodded to him, not sure he could speak through his closed throat. Kissed him hard.

Harry gave a long, shuddering sigh that went from his toes up to his head. His hands fussed with Draco’s belt, fingers tickling along his waist and pulling the belt free of its loops with a jerk. Draco swayed above Harry, sucking at his mouth and his chin, feverishly hot all of a sudden and spurred on by the answering heat in the body twisting beneath him. He needed Harry bare, maybe not fully, but more than this, more than his heaving chest under Draco’s unsteady fingers, more than his naked legs hugging Draco’s thighs. Harry’s hand had climbed up his back beneath his shirt, and now his fingers clenched, digging tiny points of fire into his skin, and it felt delicious. Draco could taste the tidal tension welling up over the brink of whatever had been holding it in check, finally about to gain release, to wash up, out, and away.

He yanked at Harry’s pants, gripping his hips as they slid down, clutching with one hand and trying to hold himself up with the other. Harry cupped his face suddenly… and Draco froze, shaking, afraid that to move would be to fall.

Only he didn’t. He saw Harry’s stomach muscles flex as he heaved himself up and caught Draco’s mouth off-centre, his lips glancing and then pressing. Opening. Draco fell into the kiss again, sinking down onto Harry and lapping at his mouth, sucking, breathing, just… needing it. Harry tugged his trousers down until they bunched at his knees. Draco fidgeted them off, and then he knew that it, this, was going to finish, as surely as a fresh flood of air into his lungs.

He reached down and worked Harry free of his briefs with one hand, fingers trembling so hard he wasn’t certain he was making any progress. Harry watched him intently even as he let out a tiny, helpless moan. Fingers clenched Draco’s nape and released, clenched again— Draco slid his hand up Harry’s stomach, over his chest until he could grip his shoulder. He knelt, one knee either side of Harry’s torso, and then, no details, no thought, really, just instinct, he reached back and began to prepare himself with his fingers.

Harry’s eyes flickered down and back up. Draco saw him swallow, damp throat glistening as it moved under the light. Draco bent and kissed it, tasting salt. He mouthed Harry’s lips, and then got a little blurry as his own body gave a little, opening, easing. He must have spoken because suddenly Harry was scrabbling for something, calling an _Accio,_ and then Draco was warm and slick and panting, and Harry’s hand was gripping his left forearm tightly.

Draco couldn’t look at him as he moved back, as he reached and positioned Harry. He uttered a protective charm and then lowered himself onto his lover. Harry’s body gave an abrupt heave and pain bloomed, sharp before fading. Draco gasped, easing down until he was flush with Harry’s hips and he could feel the quivering in them.

Gods, he— Draco groaned and sought oxygen. His lungs felt half their normal size. He squeezed Harry’s shoulder hard and bit his lower lip, staying as still as he could until the pain became near-pain became no pain, and he had to move. He slumped back down onto Harry and rocked, their chests rubbing and slipping together, Harry’s legs coming up against his arse, Harry’s hands cupping, helping him.

Harry panted helplessly. Draco opened his eyes and looked up at last. And couldn’t move. Couldn’t complete the pressure that was building, could only float in it and feel it all around, and see the person beneath him.

His eyes began to burn. He looked through it and saw the sweat beading Harry’s forehead, the damp strands of dark hair— he’d never looked at any of his lovers like this, man or woman, gods, he’d never seen them, and all of a sudden, Draco found himself speaking, words passing his lips between shuddering breaths. “You matter,” he whispered. He could barely look at Harry’s eyes, yet he didn’t want to look away. His hand trembled inches from the face before him. “Should have been you.”

He heard his own voice break.

Harry’s eyes darted; Draco felt them tracking over his face. Both of Harry’s hands rose and cradled his cheeks gently, warm fingertips sliding into Draco’s hair. Draco shook, but Harry’s hands held steady. Held _him_ steady.

“Draco.” Harry wet his lips. His mouth opened and closed once before he said, “It’s always been you.”

Harry’s fingers slipped to his nape and pressed him downward. His head rose, the sinews in his throat tightening under gleaming skin, and touched his lips to Draco’s forehead. It was open-mouthed. Draco felt Harry’s exhalation brush his skin, the quiver of each breath.

He’d never wanted a person so much in his life.

He lifted his chin and caught Harry’s mouth forcefully. Harry let out a tiny sound. Draco squeezed his eyes tight when he heard it, afraid of what might spill out of them.

With his fingers tangled firmly in Harry’s hair, Draco thrust forward and completely lost his breath at the sensation. He was shaking, all over. One of Harry’s hands slid down his side, down further, until his palm cupped the back of Draco’s thigh. Fingers squeezed— Draco caught Harry’s lip in his teeth as he was urged into movement.

After that, he couldn’t stop. Every twist of his hips, every tightening of Harry’s fingers sent him struggling for breath, for more of Harry’s mouth. His belly was a flooding mass of fire, the sensation that one more clench, one more push, would send him right over the rim into the fall. He rubbed a hand over Harry’s chest, feeling slick sweat and the hard rise of a nipple, making Harry’s stomach flex in a shiver that had Draco’s skin rippling with gooseflesh.

Harry gripped Draco’s hips; he felt the pressure of each finger. There was no way to meet the force of that ache, and Draco grasped helplessly at Harry’s hand, up his arm to his shoulder and back down. He moaned, flexing his hips, trying to find the perfect angle that was lying just out of his reach. Harry made a choked sound and grabbed hold of his waist, pulling Draco snugly against him. He thrust upward, rhythmic and uncontrolled at the same time.

Draco felt the arch coming just before it happened: Harry’s body went utterly taut, fingers clenching, hips pressing up. Draco felt Harry’s climax from within, long and unbearable and excruciatingly right. But it was the noise Harry made, the release of both air and sound, that thrust Draco abruptly toward the edge. He gasped into Harry’s mouth, felt the heat travel up through his thighs into his lower back, and nearly bit his tongue.

Harry’s hand slipped down between them, the other kneading the hollow of his hip, and Draco came, shaking and helpless, and finally boneless against Harry’s chest.

* * *

It was difficult to breathe. Draco blinked blurrily at the bed hangings. He felt as if all the energy he had left had been wiped right out of him, sucked through his toes and fingertips and hair. Spasms skirted through him, echoes that tripped along his hips and hands and lungs until his breathing shuddered again, as violently as Harry’s body shuddered.

Draco could taste sweat on his lips, clean and full-bodied. Harry’s skin was hot, his chest full of sound: the thump of his heart filled Draco’s head with its quick rhythm.

It occurred to Draco, as gradually as the creep of sunlight, that this was the sound Harry’s heart made just after he’d come. This was what he tasted like, this was how his arms and hair and legs and chest felt. Draco felt like his entire body was aware of all of it.

“Harry…” It was an exhalation with a name on it, a host of unspoken pleas behind, slipping from Draco’s mouth before he was ready. He lifted his head away from the sound and sweat and warmth.

Harry didn’t answer. His breathing slowed, then picked up again. Draco felt Harry’s hand on the back of his neck. He lowered his head to Harry’s chest again, and felt lips press against his forehead.

“It’ll be all right,” Harry murmured. The still-harsh sound of his breathing echoed in Draco’s ear. Harry’s fingers entwined in his hair. “Be all right,” he sighed against Draco’s temple. The words brushed across his skin.

Draco tightened his arm about Harry, a spasmodic clench. And did not release. He wound his fingers through Harry’s, then pressed their joined hands between their damp, heaving chests and held on.

* * *

 **What Really Happened to Gregory Goyle**

 

It had been terrifying to witness the small triangular room shifting right around him, the sandy walls falling away as if they were tumbling into a void, replaced by silvery rock with no ceiling. Just an endless darkness above. It was several minutes before he ventured a little way down the hall in which he found himself. But he didn’t go far; there was something about the look of the walls on either side of him, the strange echoing quality to what sounded like a vast room… He thought he might have figured out what the place had become, and if he was right, it was vital that he stop moving. Greg put a hand out and touched the smooth stones beside him. Up ahead, there was a passage off to the right, and further on, the corridor made a sharp left turn. He’d peered around that corner and found more turns, more side passages, before returning to where he’d started.

“Is it a maze?” His voice sounded surprised even to him.

“That took much less time than I expected,” said another voice.

Greg spun, whipping his wand up. His heart gave a leap; he expected to find Draco, Pansy or Potter, even Theodore there behind him. But the cul-de-sac was empty: only the odd, blank portrait frame hung there. Greg’s stomach lurched. He turned around, fingers tensed on his wand. “Who said that?”

“Another puzzle that needs solving.” The voice was… female and deep. Full tones. Greg backed up until he was against the nearest wall and trained his wand to the right, then to the left. At first he could see no one. Then something moved out of the corner of his eye, and he jumped, trying to remember the words of a curse.

The portrait frame was no longer empty. Greg stared. It wasn’t a painting, exactly; nothing like the massive portraits hanging in the castle upstairs. More like stained glass, or— Greg squinted. Tiny bits of coloured stone. The person depicted squinted back at him, and Greg gave a surprised shout.

It was the portrayal of a woman, with black hair so dark it was nearly blue. Her face was long, pale, and elegant, almost elfin in appearance, with dark brows and a full mouth. There was a faint cleft in her chin. But her eyes looked out of place, startlingly large and deep gold. She raised her eyebrows; Greg could see each coloured stone sliding into place as she moved.

“I don’t know you,” Greg blurted, rather idiotically in his own opinion. But she showed no sign of agreement.

“Do not be ridiculous, no one _knows_ me any longer,” she scoffed.

Greg shook his head. Something about the entire situation nagged at him, as if he’d seen her before. He’d never heard a voice quite like hers: accented similar to the speech of those up north, and quite deep for a woman’s voice. But her face…

“I admit, you were not in my house when last you set foot in the castle,” she said. “But you should have known one of us very well.”

Greg blinked. “House? I—” A flash of a picture fled through his mind, the same face staring up at him from the crisp pages of a school book, nearly the exact same picture. “Oh, Salazar, you’re a Founder!”

“Clearly not that Founder.” She looked arch and unimpressed. “Guess again, Mr Goyle.”

Greg stared at her unblinkingly for some time. She said nothing, but her face said much: her lips held the hint of an amused smile while her eyes told him of a general impatience that looked as if it were the dominant emotion there.

“Well,” he began, then cleared his throat. Looked around himself, down the passage to where it turned out of sight. “If this is a maze…” He glanced at her for a hint, but she gave him nothing. “And you said something about puzzles. And guessing. Only Ravenclaws are that—” He barely caught himself. “Interesting.”

The impatience faded and her smile bloomed. “A very timely recovery, Mr Goyle. I applaud your survival instinct.”

“Rowena Ravenclaw. I’m… sorry.”

The woman waved her hand swiftly. “No time for it. You’ve someone to retrieve. It would not suit us to be the last to return. I am never last.”

Greg felt himself redden. “I am.”

“Only because you _listen_ to them. Do stop. You are quite capable of forming your own opinions of yourself.”

Greg blinked. There was something so weird about the entire thing: trapped deep under the ground, talking to a mosaic that had somehow stolen his son? But— He shook his head. Whatever the Ravenclaws might have been, they had never really been scary. That had been left to his house, and Potter’s. No, Ravenclaws were odd birds, at least five feet over the heads of everyone else and still looking at the sky. They were clever and keen, and definitely bizarre. But they’d never hurt anyone he knew. Somehow, he doubted their Founder would begin such a trend.

“You know where my son is? Um, Madam Founder?” he added to the end of the sentence. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he got it. “But… you’re not going to tell me.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” she said. “Haven’t you a brain?”

Greg didn’t answer that second question. “Is he hurt?”

Something in her jaw clicked tighter. “No,” she intoned, and he knew not to ask again.

“Okay,” he breathed. He made himself look her straight in the eye, and felt very intimidated. “What do I have to do to get him back?”

If mosaics could shrug, this one did it. “Find him. Of course.”

“So he’s somewhere in this maze?”

She sighed. “I prefer labyrinth, personally. It sounds much grander and delightfully pretentious. But yes. No more hints.”

“Do I get anything to work with?” he asked.

“Such as?”

Greg looked around, up, down, along the corridor and back. “Well, a rope, maybe. Or…” His wand occurred to him again; he jerked it up and made to invoke a summoning spell.

“No, Mr Goyle. There will be none of that in my labyrinth.”

Greg lowered his wand. “What? None of what?”

“Summoning,” she said blithely. “Too much summoning, not enough old-fashioned _thought,_ I’ve always said.”

He looked down at his wand. “So, no ropes. And no markers.”

Her eyes went crinkly when she smiled.

Greg stretched out his left hand and touched his fingertips to the wall. He looked back at the mosaic. “You aren’t going to be moving the walls around, are you?”

Her eyebrow lifted. “That would be cheating, and I do not cheat.”

Greg looked at her sidelong, and then bent and removed one of his shoes. He pulled the sock he wore free, wadded it up, and shoved it into the corner just under the portrait frame. He slipped his foot back into his shoe and wiggled his toes until the fit was right again. Rowena Ravenclaw nodded approvingly, so Greg placed his hand on the left-side wall again and began to walk.

* * *

Somehow, her voice was following him, even though he hadn’t seen another portrait frame in some time. “Anything of note, Mr Goyle?”

“Fingertips are a bit sore,” he said.

“Why not switch to the other hand?”

Greg grimaced. “I’d have to walk backwards, and that doesn’t work so well for me. Bit clumsy, you see.”

She made a sound like a grumble. “I told you I would not be moving the walls.”

“But I can’t be sure I’ve covered every inch unless I keep to the same side,” Greg returned. “I could just end up going back over the same ground if I switch to the right.”

“Clever,” she murmured.

Greg snorted. “Slow, you mean.”

“Thorough,” she retorted. “Eliminating one’s options systematically does not equate with clumsiness.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been thought of as thorough,” Greg said.

“That is rather funny, as that is the exact word your son used to describe you.”

Greg stopped, so surprised he nearly took his hand off the wall. “You spoke to him? He knows what’s happening?”

“Not the details, but yes, he has a general idea. It seems to me that he is in much better spirits than the other four students. Your son has been quite calm about the entire situation.”

Greg took a second to process her words, then smiled and continued his passage through the labyrinth. “He’s always too busy thinking about things to be properly scared of them. I guess it’s a good thing, though. He could have ended up like I was—”

“Oh, but he is like you.”

Greg surveyed the walls yet again, trying to locate a portrait frame that might have the Founder of Ravenclaw in it, but discovered nothing. It was just as well: he couldn’t think of a single good response to that anyway. It seemed he often drew a blank where Aubrey was concerned.

“How big is your ma— labyrinth?” he inquired instead. Her chuckle floated to his ears.

“How would that knowledge help you?”

Greg hunched a shoulder, rubbing at his neck. “Guess it wouldn’t help much. Only, I’ve been walking for a long while now.”

“Then logically…”

“Logically, I should either find Aubrey or—” Greg stopped as he turned a corner and found himself looking at an empty frame. And right below it, in the corner… “Or my sock.”

He bent and retrieved the bundled sock, shook it out, and held it up. It was definitely his. It even had the worn bit under the heel, and the fraying hem. When he looked up, she was in the frame, looking back at him.

“I don’t…” He chewed his lip. “We went the entire way, and I never took my hand off the wall. Should have worked. If he’s actually in here.”

It was bolder than he’d thought himself capable of, suggesting that Rowena Ravenclaw was lying. But she only spirited a smile his way, a very small curve of her lips, and narrowed her eyes at him.

“Then perhaps another method is appropriate in this situation,” she said.

He nodded.

Her grin was sly and gleaming. “So what will you do?”

Greg rolled his wand in his hand and looked up. Around. He’d gone the entire maze and found no trace of his son. She’d said she would not move the walls… but maybe it hadn’t been the walls that were moving. Aubrey had two legs, and a well-known willingness to explore. He had to find a way to first locate, and then stop, his son. “I’m going to go through the walls.”

The fact that it didn’t make her laugh was actually heartening. “I assure you, they are impervious to dismantling magic.”

“I’m not going to take them apart.” Greg pointed his wand straight out in front of him. “At least, not in that way. _Translucio_.”

The wall before him began to shimmer, to ripple and fade, until what looked like a largish hole appeared in the stones, right along his wand’s sights. The wall beyond it began to shimmer and vanish, followed by the one beyond that, and the one beyond that.

“Well, _well_.” She sounded positively cheerful. “I was expecting the Four-Point Spell.”

“If it were the Four-Points-to-Aubrey Spell, maybe.” Greg peered along his wand and turned slowly in a circle to his right. “Never could fix a tracking charm on him. He’s been lost dozens of times. Always finds his way back, though. I mean, he’s a smart boy. More like his mum than his dad.” He shrugged.

“I beg to differ, Mr Goyle,” Rowena Ravenclaw said in a dry tone. “It is obvious that your former wife is supremely stupid. No intelligent woman would have walked away from a family that truly loved her.”

Greg tried not to fidget. His wand was motionless in front of him, showing him nothing but more corridors and more walls. “She walked away from me, not Aubrey.”

“She walked away from both of you,” the Founder said sternly. “You, Mr Goyle, are by far the more intelligent parent.”

“I… don’t think you would feel the same if you knew me.”

Her eyes went kinder and she seemed to lean forward in the frame. “I know this: you are the one braving the unknown to rescue your son. I also know that your son believes you will be the one to get him out.”

Greg stared at her. “He does?”

She rolled her eyes and frowned. “Oh, stop. As if you did not know. Now. Find him, if you please.”

Suddenly, Greg caught a flash of colour. He nearly jerked his wand too far in the opposite direction, and for a moment, he thought he’d lost it. But then the transparent circle steadied and he saw his son. Aubrey was walking down the corridor, wearing worn-out sweatpants and that trim brown nightshirt he liked so much, the one with the long sleeves snugged up to his elbows. He had no wand and was hugging one wall as he went, looking around.

It wasn’t a conscious thought; Greg just reacted. “Aubrey!” he called. Amazingly, his son halted.

“Dad?”

Greg blinked. He looked at the portrait, and then back at the trembling hole his wand was creating. “Aubrey, you can hear me?”

“Yeah,” his son answered. “Dad, where are you?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Greg thought he could see Rowena Ravenclaw smirking. “I’m in the labyrinth. I’m coming to get you.”

Aubrey grinned and turned back the way he’d come, and Greg remembered. “Wait, Aubrey, I want you to stay there and don’t move. I’ll come to you. Just stay there.”

His son dutifully stopped and leaned against the nearest stone façade. “Got it.”

“Just stay in that spot.” Greg lowered his wand to end the spell, his nerves getting the better of him, and then cursed. “Bloody hell, which way is he?”

She spoke up again. “Either way will get you there, as you well know.”

Greg met her eyes and nodded. “All right. All right, then.”

He resumed his contact with the wall, the one on his right this time, and started walking.

This circuit felt like it was taking ages. Every corner he came to, his heart leaped at the thought that Aubrey might be just around it. The disappointment each time was crushing. After a time, the emotion of it all faded to a dull ache somewhere above his stomach. The odd sensation that she was still watching him, going around each corner with him, bolstered him enough to keep the impatience at bay.

He lost track of how many turns he’d taken. Just one after another, grey walls and cool light. He turned yet another corner, and another, and there was his son at the end of the passage. Aubrey had his thumbs in his pockets and was tapping all eight fingers on his thighs, looking up at the black void.

“Aubrey,” Greg said, stopping more out of surprise than anything else. His son turned around and his face split into a huge grin.

“Dad!” he cried, loping forward on long legs. He caught himself up in Greg’s numbly raised arms and clapped him on the back. When Aubrey pulled up to face him, his smile was warm and proud. “Knew you’d do it. I knew it.”

* * *

 **Draco**

 

Scorpius stood barefoot on a path of blackened stones. The wind plastered his hair back from his face. Draco studied the tension in his son’s shoulders, the rigidity of his jaw. He looked to his right and saw Harry, his hands clasped behind him, standing directly in a beam of light that made the surrounding darkness darker.

“What are you doing?” Draco asked.

His son snarled something. His knees locked and his arm shot out. A white hand grasped his wrist and yanked him down the path, pulling as Scorpius struggled and scratched. Blood appeared on the pale skin of the hand gripping him.

Draco frowned and stepped forward, only to find that his legs would not move.

“I’ll do it,” Harry called, and then stayed where he was, turning around and around in the shaft of light.

“I don’t want that,” Scorpius cried. The sound banged around in Draco’s brain. Voldemort bent down off the dais in front of them, crooked a finger and dragged Scorpius forward again.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Voldemort hissed. His snake tongue licked out of his mouth and disappeared back inside.

“You’re burning, you know,” Harry said. Draco looked down.

Fire slithered around his feet, twisting golden loops in the stones. The pain was horrific. It sucked at his ankles and slunk up his left leg until it was dancing along his arm. A serpent’s head lifted out of the flame, alight with yellow and orange sparks, and rubbed against his wrist.

Voldemort was digging a Dark Mark into Scorpius’ arm with one long fingernail.

Draco screamed and didn’t hear anything. His skin burned. “I’m no use with your locks,” Harry said, then pointed over to his left. The wall there began to glow fiercely gold. Colours swirled into it, shaping themselves into eyes and a nose and mouth.

 _One must burn in order to know._

“No, we’ll find them together,” Harry growled. But grinding filled Draco’s ears and a wall slammed down between them with a horrendous crack, blocking Harry from sight.

Draco came awake with a gasp, clenching the duvet with his left hand. His first view was disorienting, a mass of dark drapery layered above him as if it were the night sky. Draco dropped his head to the side, feeling sick.

And saw Harry. His face was expressionless, but then he turned his head and made a small sound, his eyes pinching at the corners as he woke.

The sick feeling was building before Draco fully noticed its presence. Memories of Harry kissing him, touching him, and being inside him swarmed into his mind, but he couldn’t feel it, he couldn’t… remember the physical feeling. Dream images lashed out, his son in Voldemort’s grip, himself not moving to save him— Draco covered his mouth with one hand and shut his eyes, forcing himself not to sick up. By the time the sensation receded, Harry was awake and looking at him.

“You all right?” Harry’s words were raspy with sleep.

“I’m…”

Harry reached out and brushed hair back from Draco’s eyes. A warm feeling slid unexpectedly into Draco’s chest, so familiar and desired. He pulled away.

“Oh, gods,” he mumbled. He rolled upright and sat, gripping the mattress’ edge with both hands. “Can’t believe I’m doing this when he’s out there.”

Harry’s fingers wrapped around his wrist. “Stop. Don’t, _Draco—_ ”

Draco twisted his hand free. “I have to find him.”

He got off the bed and stumbled to where his clothes lay scattered across the floor. His mind reeled with dreams and memories. He could hear Harry getting out of bed, but he didn’t look at him, and as soon as he had his trousers on and his shirt over his shoulders, he left the room.

* * *

 **Theodore Nott Finds the Light**

 

When the wall closed between Theodore and the others, the room went utterly black. He lost his balance, swinging a hand out to catch the wall that he knew was there, only to fall hard, hitting both knees on the ground. Pain shot through his legs; Theodore could only think to roll and lessen the agony. His wand skittered out of his fingers, clacking away into the darkness. He lay heaving on the floor, the chill of the stones seeping through his robes.

Wasn’t sure if he’d passed out, it was so dark.

He could hear sharp breathing, and realised belatedly that it was his own. Theodore held his breath and the silence closed in, as thick as the fear clotting his heart and lungs. He felt naked without his wand, his fingers fragile and incapable. Anything, a light, a sound—

He gagged for air and rolled onto his side, coughing, then drew himself to his knees. It felt like he was falling, his equilibrium shattered, swaying back and forth with no reference. He shut his eyes tightly and the sensation lessened, simply because it felt familiar, darkness when his eyes were closed rather than open.

It was impossible to tell where he was. Theodore opened his eyes again and stretched out on either side of himself with both arms, leaning as far as he dared, reaching for the flat face of a wall. Nothing. Nothing in front or behind, to the right or left. It was as if he’d been thrown into the chamber of some deep cave, all damp air and endless blackness. He tried to think which direction his wand had gone and was about to start forward when he realised how foolish the idea was. Obviously he was no longer where he’d started, in the tiny room with the pictureless frame. He could hear nothing of his companions, no grinding, no sound except for those he made himself.

He made himself stand, blood thudding hard in his veins. Tried to step forward and found terror squeezing his muscles. The premonition of walking over an edge into a chasm rocked through his mind like an avalanche. Theodore bit his lip hard enough to break the skin, trying to still the panic slinking through him. He made himself listen.

There was some sort of dripping, water falling from the ceiling, perhaps. Soft but not soothing, and far away. He could hear the sounds of wind tunnelled through a tight passageway. But he felt no stirring of the air. He waved a hand in front of his eyes and saw nothing. The floor was made of cold stones; there was nothing else recognisable about the place. But then he heard a sound he did recognise. It clutched around his heart like a hand gripping.

His daughter was sobbing, somewhere in the room.

“Lavinia?” he called hoarsely. Her quiet gasps continued. He reached out, feeling for something, anything. “Lavinia!”

“Yes.” The slithery voice stopped Theodore cold. “Make her hear you, Theodore Nott.”

He spun around, feeling with his hands, but the speaker was not near enough to touch. Theodore couldn’t see anything except impenetrable gloom. Lavinia’s sobs had softened into too-quick breathing, and Theodore’s own breath stuck in his throat.

“She doesn’t like the dark!” he shouted, instinct taking him forward into the nothingness. “Let her out this instant, you sadistic coward, or I’ll—”

“Threats become you,” said the silken voice. “But you are already aware of that. Is she?”

Theodore froze. There was no change in his daughter’s gasps, no sign that she’d heard him calling. But obviously someone had.

“Where is she?” he managed.

“In the dark.”

“I can see that!” Theodore shouted. A sour taste rose up into his throat; he swallowed painfully. “Why have you bloody well put her there?”

For a moment there was no answer. And then, icily, “It was you who put her there.”

Theodore felt very cold. “I… I would _never_ …”

Not after Cedra. Not after the night when he’d woken in the room at St Mungo’s to find his six-year-old daughter screaming over the dead body of his wife. The room had been very, very dark, and yet the moonlight had shown through the curtains and reflected off of Cedra’s blank eyes.

They’d known she was dying. That it would be soon. But not so suddenly. Not in the dark, and not witnessed by their only child. If only he’d been awake, or if Lavinia had been asleep in his arms instead of curled beside his wife—

“You know you are responsible.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Theodore cried.

“Is that what you think matters?” answered the voice in such a way that Theodore winced. The blackness pressed into him, endless, and somewhere within it, he could hear Lavinia’s desperate breaths.

“Why can’t she hear me?” he said at last.

“She does not hear you because she does not know you,” his antagonist answered thinly.

Fury tore through Theodore’s uneasiness. “She is my _daughter!”_

“And so you force her to know who you are from those who do not know you at all? An insipid choice.”

The sting pierced deep and twisted Theodore’s tongue to muteness.

“A Slytherin must know his limits,” the cold voice hissed at him in the dark. “A Slytherin learns from his mistakes and understands himself better for them.”

Theodore swallowed hard. “I can’t,” he whispered. His hands clasped and unclasped helplessly. “I can’t tell her of those things. I’m—”

Lavinia’s near-sobs echoed strangely.

“The things I did… The things I was willing to do—”

“You will not weep over what cannot be changed,” the voice snarled, stopping Theodore once again. When the voice continued, it was softer. Fainter. “A Slytherin must know the truth. He must wear it upon his person like a second skin. Only then can he gain true control over it.”

Theodore’s fear gnawed at him sharply; the idea of speaking aloud what he’d kept silent for so many years was terrifying. Like giving it life again.

“Please,” he tried, one more time. “Please let her out. Don’t punish her for my deeds.”

“Your deeds? This is not a punishment for what you have done. It concerns what you have not done. Now, go. Light the room.”

Then there was nothing.

“Hello?” Theodore’s own voice sounded small and alone. Something inside him knew that whoever had been speaking was not going to answer. Wasn’t even there anymore. He squinted, trying desperately to see something, anything.

It was no use. His mind was as blank as his sight. He couldn’t get himself to move.

Then he heard Lavinia again: weak, rushed panting on the edge of tears.

“Lavinia?” he asked quietly. There was no indication that she’d heard him. He couldn’t tell where she was; it was as if she were everywhere. He took a step forward and stopped. There was nowhere to go and something in him knew it. If their captor was who Theodore thought he was… there was little point in trying to deny him.

The problem lay in how to begin. Theodore knew there was no easy starting place in the whole mess. Nothing that would make sense, and he wanted, he _needed_ , to make sense this time.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he began. “And I don’t know a good way to start. I think the beginning of it all is a lot further in the past than I ever realised—” Merlin, he could go on forever and get nowhere. Theodore rubbed his arm absently, and then stopped and looked down in the same direction. He couldn’t see his hand or his arm. But he knew what was there, what he was touching.

“You’ve seen the tattoo on my left arm,” he said into the darkness. “You even asked me about it once. I’m afraid I gave you a vague answer. I’d just as soon you didn’t know about it, not at that age. And that was stupid, because of course you would know eventually. Everyone knows eventually what this particular mark means.”

 _I’m just sorry that you didn’t find out from me._ He didn’t say it. It sounded incredibly trite.

“I won’t insult you by explaining it now.” Theodore cleared his throat as his voice caught. “Your education and your friends have given you the necessary information, I’m sure. Suffice it to say that that mark is from a long time ago, a time when I was a fool. When I followed insanity. Somehow, insanity made sense. Now I… can’t think why.”

She was still distraught. He wanted to shout at the one keeping her there, demand to know if this was all some trick, if she could even hear him at all. But his fury pulled back as quickly as it had rolled in. He twisted his hands together in the darkness and shook them out, trying to loosen his body, his tongue. His thoughts.

What finally drove him was the chance that if he got it all out, he would find her. Get her out of there.

“It’s not an experience I miss, Lavinia. Not really a childhood or even a young adulthood I remember fondly anymore. My decisions were not intelligent, but I’m sorry to say that they fit who I was then. I was… angry afterward. For a long time. But then I met your mother, and you arrived, and I thought… _you_ need not learn my faults. I fear I haven’t changed. And I feared you would become like me. After all, I’m—” He inhaled. “All you have left to learn from.”

Theodore felt muddled, like he wasn’t making much sense. He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips and pictured Lavinia’s face. She looked so much like Cedra. It was his wife’s dark hair that piled in curls on Lavinia’s head. Their daughter had the same rounded face and high cheekbones. And there was a way she tilted her chin that always struck a tremor in his heart, no matter how many times he saw it. It was Cedra’s, Cedra who had listened to his every secret, his every deed, and had loved him afterward in spite of how much his love for himself had diminished. His wife had not challenged him to change, just to accept and absorb. To understand that it was, at last, over.

But Cedra would never have let them become like this. She never would have stood for it. Theodore swallowed and forced himself on.

“My father, your grandfather, was Thomas Riddle’s assassin. In the first war, before I existed. I doubt Binns ever took the time to describe those sorts of servants in a way that made an impact. They, the Death Eaters then, they were all killers, but my father… he was different. He was something worse. He was meticulous in a way that even Riddle wasn’t. Riveted, and obsessive. He… I wonder now how it was that his heart could have held so much care for me when it was so filled with… other things.

“But my mistake was choosing to learn from him. To assume his tasks. If the second war had gone on longer—”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t get himself to say those words, even though he’d said all the others. He was still a coward in this small sense.

In front of his daughter, his lovely, strong, intelligent daughter, he couldn’t face the failure of what he had been. And it wasn’t a fear of himself. He’d dreamt about, denied, grasped at, and finally accepted his past deeds because Cedra was right: they couldn’t be changed. Changing himself was all he could do. What terrified him was—

He was afraid of the way Lavinia would look at him.

“I never killed anyone.” His throat was so dry he could hardly breathe, let alone speak. “I never did that. But I did hurt, and I did destroy. Most days I can convince myself that the injury I caused was brief, something that would heal eventually. But on the worst days, I know I destroyed lives, even if not in the mortal sense. There’s much more to living than just breathing and possessing a heartbeat.”

He was shaking uncontrollably. It had been a long, long time since he had last given voice to these things, and it was like ripping a line across his chest and reaching in, grasping his very blood and pulling it free of his body in streams. Blood that was stale from its long wallow in gloom, all rushing free, stinging every artery through which it passed.

“Your mother…” He shut his eyes; it did not change the darkness, but it kept his tears inside for just a moment longer. “When she died, all I could think was how much it hurt, to lose her. And to lose the only person who understood me. So much effort— for both of us. You were the only one I had left, the only piece of her, and I was so scared of losing you, too, of… of trying to explain myself and watching it repulse you, that I let it alone. If you didn’t know about it, then how could you…”

It sounded futile now, trying to explain the result of frenzy and grief and paranoia to someone he was supposed to love above all of that. Love didn’t mean keeping that distance, it meant drawing closer, and he had failed so miserably. He’d been too afraid to pierce his old wounds again, and so instead had locked her away from him.

“I don’t want you to hate me. For what I was then or for what I’ve done to us now. I just wanted you to have your life, without knowing about the ugly parts of mine. But I’ve been selfish, and I’ve messed it all, I know I have. I am so sorry.”

His words hung in the void, the only sound now; even Lavinia’s gasps had ceased. His eyes ached. He could feel the cool tracks of the tears he hadn’t managed to keep inside drying on his cheeks. The worst part was that he didn’t know what else to say, what other confessions remained that held the power to drive away the blackness. It had all drained away and left him empty.

And then— he thought he was seeing things: a tiny spark of light somewhere in the room. It widened gradually into a gentle glow. Theodore sucked in a breath as his surroundings began to reveal themselves. The room was large, but not endless, and it was empty, except for the person who sat on the floor against the far wall.

He couldn’t say her name. She was lit in tones of soft yellow as the strange, sourceless light grew. Her gaze fixed on him as she got to her feet and came toward him. He could see she’d been crying, but her eyes were dry and pensive now.

She came across the room and stopped a few feet in front of him.

“Dad,” she said.

Theodore cleared his throat. “Lavinia.” It seemed unreal, that he’d spoken all that he had, that she’d heard it. But he could see in her face that she knew things she hadn’t before.

“I could hear you calling me,” she whispered. “I answered, I swear I did.”

He opened his mouth, closed it. Tried again. “I only heard you crying.”

“I was,” she blurted, then drew back. “At first, I was. But not… not now.”

“I know.”

And she smiled at him. It was hard to imagine that he was capable of returning it. But he did.

* * *

 **Draco**

 

“She was there the entire time,” Greg explained. His large hands moved quickly as he gesticulated. “She kept talking to me. Helped me figure things out—”

“No, you’re the one who figured things out, Dad.”

Draco watched dully as Greg wrapped his smiling son in both arms. Harry, crouched in front of the pair, craned his head around to look at him. Draco turned away, his face heating.

They were in the main atrium, standing beside the huge front staircase where the Goyles were seated. Draco’s heart had been racing since he’d stumbled up from the dungeons, and it showed no signs of slowing down. His muscles ached, full of twitches and nervous energy that he knew wasn’t really strength. It was adrenaline, and it was the only thing keeping him upright.

“You’re sure it was Rowena Ravenclaw?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure. She told me so. Besides, I remembered her from one of our history texts.”

“Well,” Granger said, “well, Aubrey _is_ a Ravenclaw…”

“If you hadn’t noticed,” Draco snapped, “we’re missing four other students. That leaves us one Founder short.”

Granger’s mouth thinned, but her frown was more troubled than irritated. Draco could sense Harry’s eyes on him. And when the hell had he developed that sense so fucking clearly?

Part of him wanted Harry’s eyes on him. The other part was disgusted with himself. Draco folded his arms and began to pace.

“I can’t imagine they’d hurt anyone,” Greg offered. “She, Rowena Ravenclaw, I mean, she wasn’t the sort. The others couldn’t be.”

“The four Founders were not the same,” McGonagall muttered. Her glower was so fierce that it looked engraved into her face. “I can think of one that would be far less particular about his methods.”

“Hell, we don’t really know anything about any of them, do we?” Harry said suddenly. He stood up. Draco could see his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Just stories from history books. Just the word of people who didn’t know them either!”

“Oh, I can’t believe the wizards and witches who founded this school would be all that interested in killing children!” Granger cried. “Only one of them went that direction, and that was _decades_ later. Really, Harry—”

“She wouldn’t have hurt me,” Aubrey Goyle said. “Honestly. She wasn’t like that.”

Greg studied his son, and then turned to the rest of them. “I agree.”

Harry looked like he might offer another argument, but let it go. “The fact is that none of the others have come back. Except Draco and myself. And we didn’t see any of the other children, or the Founders. No one spoke to us except to tell us that our test was over.”

He didn’t quite look at Draco this time, but Draco could practically hear him pondering between the two male Founders. Certainly, the voice they’d heard had been a man’s.

“I’m going back,” Draco said. They all turned to him, even Aubrey. He glared back. “No one is going to keep me from my son.”

He didn’t mean for his gaze to end on Harry, but it did. A faint rush of colour filled Harry’s cheeks. Draco shut his eyes.

He heard Greg speaking again eventually, but he wasn’t comprehending. He no longer had that ability. His brain swam with Scorpius, his face, his hair, the hateful look on his face as he’d stalked out of Draco’s chambers. It was the last time he’d really seen his son.

And like a boggart, his nightmare kept intruding, pushing through the memories of his son and slamming itself repeatedly against his nerves. The pain of the fire at his feet was almost a physical memory. The sound of his son’s screams as he was Marked rang in Draco’s ears, and that voice, those final words—

Draco opened his eyes.

He’d heard that voice before, and so had Harry. But if what it had said then was true, there was no reason the voice should still be speaking to him.

He wasn’t ready, it had said. His test had not been satisfactorily completed. His test…

Draco concentrated on the dream as best he could, tamping down the reality of his missing son with some difficulty, and forced himself to think. He could smell the ghost of the fire in his dream, see the snake’s head rearing from it and curling up his arm.

He found himself gazing at where the strange doorway had been. The arch remained, standing over the walled-up opening. There had been a maze for them as well, but it had been a different sort. A test of resilience. Dedication. _One must burn to know. One must…_

 _To know._

 _His_ test.

Harry’s voice startled him. “Are you all right?”

Draco didn’t answer. He heard Harry sigh.

“It’s a test,” the other man said. “Almost a riddle.”

“I know,” Draco murmured.

Harry looked at him. Draco met his eyes, and saw something sharpen there.

“Draco. What?”

“One must burn to know,” was all he said.

Harry’s mouth thinned in confusion. Draco tore his attention away from the other man’s lips and faced the arch again.

Just then, the wall ground open and something came staggering out of it. Draco blinked, someone shouted, and everybody leaped into motion: the Aurors at the entrance doors came running over, McGonagall hurried from the stairs— the new arrivals were quickly surrounded by a small mob of people.

Draco caught glimpses of Theodore Nott’s whitened face as the people around him rushed about. Granger’s voice echoed, “Let them through, for goodness’ sake, don’t smother them!” and then Lavinia was visible, too, clinging to her father’s side. McGonagall strode in front, her arms out to clear the passage, and the whole group began to move as one to the stairs.

The archway remained open, the passage beyond flickering eerily. Almost beckoning.

Draco edged away from Harry, making his way around the throng of people. His pulse thudded in his ears, oddly slow again, but steady as a drumbeat. He was nearly to the archway when fingers wrapped around his elbow and pulled him up.

“Where are you going?” The look in Harry’s eyes was hard. His hand had locked tightly around Draco’s arm. Draco fought a shiver.

“You know where.”

Harry looked back at the others, their voices echoing up to the ceiling. When he faced Draco again, the heat in his eyes stung straight into Draco’s chest. “We’ll talk to Nott, figure out what happened to them. What we need to do.”

“I already know what I need to do,” Draco whispered.

Harry searched his face. “What are you talking about?”

“The fire,” he said.

“What about it?”

Draco looked at him, knowing he had to speak, knowing Harry was no fool. “It’s the answer to my riddle. My test.”

For several seconds, Harry looked confused. Then his eyes shot wide and ugly awareness rolled into them, fear and desperation and something much wilder, much more chaotic. He grabbed Draco’s other arm and hauled him forward against his chest.

 _“No,”_ Harry hissed into his ear. “No, that’s not the answer. You are not going to do something so stupid, do you hear me, Malfoy?”

Draco just looked at him. Harry’s eyes skated over his face frenziedly. Draco could feel each of his fingers digging into his arms.

“There’s another way,” Harry insisted. “There’s some other way and we’re going to find it, and then we’ll go in together and get our sons back. But we’re not going yet, not until we figure something else out, do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Draco whispered at last, and saw Harry’s shoulders slump with relief. There was a new clearness to Harry’s eyes, water in the green, washed out and almost swept of strength. He let go of Draco, backed up a few paces and sank against a wall, rubbing his face with one hand. His tall frame curled forward in weariness and Draco just stared, inking it onto the palette of his mind.

“ _We’re_ not going, Harry,” he repeated softly. And backed quickly through the opening under the arch.

Harry looked up, his eyes muddled. Then they filled, so shockingly that Draco’s breath caught.

“Draco!” Harry flung himself forward, but he wasn’t fast enough. Draco felt the tug of uncontrolled wandless magic whirl around him. He resisted the pull and watched until the wall ground shut, cutting his view, and Harry’s voice, away.

* * *

 **Mother’s Love**

 

She felt like she’d been walking forever. Her wand hand had long since dropped to her side. There appeared to be little point when all she could see were walls, walls, and more walls. For a while it had made her nervous, going down such a narrow passage with no obvious escape routes. But after a time, even that fear lost its power.

Pansy felt like she could walk right out from under the school, to the edge of Scotland and straight into the ocean.

Finally, the corridor ahead of her changed. She moved forward, realising that she was looking at a chamber. The passage led directly into it; no doors, no other breaks in the walls. She stepped into the room and stopped, looking around, wondering what was required of her.

The room had no other exit. It was simply a wide rectangle with another empty picture frame on the wall to her right. Pansy went closer and peered at it, tapped the frame itself, and tried to lift it off the wall. When it didn’t move, she sighed and retreated to the middle of the room.

Merlin. What was she supposed to do? Even if she found Estelle— it was odd to use that name, as it wasn’t one she would have chosen— what on earth would she do with the girl? Estelle would most likely run from her, a strange woman she’d never met. And there was no way she could just say that she was Estelle’s birth mother. What sort of reaction was she expecting? Joy? Understanding? The girl was twelve years old, barely out of childhood. She’d be frightened, Pansy was more certain of it than she’d been of anything. Frightened of her.

“Take your time, love,” said a gentle voice. Pansy turned around.

There on the wall was a mosaic of coloured stone, reds and pinks and silvery flecks of grey, forming the portrait of a woman. Her auburn hair curled thickly over her shoulders, framing a round face on which a plump, rose-pink mouth smiled kindly. She had a slender nose, blue eyes, and a wide, regal forehead. The woman tilted her head at Pansy. “There is no hurry.”

Pansy had to summon her voice. “Who are you?”

“My name is Helga,” she answered without preamble. “And you are looking for someone.”

“Yes,” Pansy half-chuckled, half-choked out. She couldn’t meet the woman’s gaze anymore, and looked down at the ground instead. “Someone I’ve lost.”

“That was not my impression, my dear.”

Pansy looked up into the face of the Founder of Hufflepuff House, uncertain what she was supposed to say. Uncertain whether the woman was even there at all. “You know about Estelle?”

The woman nodded and her smile widened. “She has your eyes.”

“Where is she?” Pansy begged, desperation thickening her voice.

The woman inclined her head, eyes fixed somewhere behind Pansy. “Through there, in that room.”

Pansy whirled around and stared at the large archway behind her where an unbroken wall had just been. There were no doors, just an opening into a chamber filled with sallow green light. Putrid-looking shadows pooled where the light could not reach. As still as if they were made of the castle’s stone, figures stood, their bodies shrouded in dark cloaks, heads bowed under raised hoods. Eight of them, four facing four, leaving an empty path between. Pansy turned away, suddenly sick. She bent and clutched her knees, breathing deeply. When she could, she looked again. None of the figures had moved; only the emerald torchlight flickered, and beyond the silent people, Pansy could see someone lying curled on the central raised platform. A small someone.

“Oh, gods,” Pansy breathed.

“It’s all right, dear,” the woman said soothingly. “Give yourself a moment.”

“I can’t.” Pansy could hear her voice shaking. “I can’t leave her in there. With them.”

“And you won’t.” The woman sounded so unperturbed. So gentle. Pansy looked at the mosaic.

She meant to demand whether or not they would hurt Estelle. Whether they’d Marked her. How this woman, this Founder, could put such a young child in danger, especially one of her own house. What came out was, “I left her.”

As soon as she said it, she felt the break begin, cracks ticking through all of her inner walls at once, shaking and shuddering. Tears filled her eyes. Pansy wobbled and barely saved herself from falling. Through the buzzing that built in her ears, she heard that kind voice again: “No, my love, that is not what happened. You remember what really happened.”

She did, terribly clearly. She remembered waiting until the flat was empty. Running without warning in the middle of the day, nothing in her arms but her newborn baby and a single bag of belongings. Just running until she could Apparate without Dorian being able to track her later, pleading with whomever might be listening to keep him with his followers, _keep him there, please, don’t let him come back home…_ Finding herself in town after city after town, hardly resting.

Realising that eventually he would find her, no matter where she went, because he knew her magic. Knew how to seek her out.

Realising that eventually she would have to part with her child to keep her from him.

“It was the wrong thing to do,” Pansy croaked. More tears slipped free.

“Who says it was the wrong thing?” Helga Hufflepuff said. “It was just the right thing. It was exactly what you both needed. You saw that you couldn’t keep her safe. So you made certain that her safety was secured by others.”

“I’m her mother,” Pansy gasped. She couldn’t seem to breathe anymore. She dropped unsteadily to her hands and knees.

“And you proved it twelve years ago. To everyone but yourself, it seems.”

Pansy’s tears dripped in splotches on the floor stones, darkening the grey. The woman waited as she tried to calm down, to listen. To think.

“I can’t leave her there,” she said again, more to herself than to the mosaic.

“Then don’t.”

Pansy looked up to find her counterpart smiling down at her. If the woman had been able, Pansy was sure she would have reached out and helped her off the floor. She got to her feet, brushing her knees off awkwardly. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and let it out. Her heart was still hammering.

The room was just as before, green light bleeding into it like a slow river. The silence inside was terrifying. It was as if she’d stepped back twelve years and was witnessing her lover’s inexorable crawl toward another attempt at world dominion. It had frightened her until she made herself sick; her last weeks of pregnancy, about to bring a baby into a world that was trembling on the brink of another explosion… She’d not known what it would mean for her, but she knew exactly what it would mean for her child.

The memory held her up, strengthened her steps inside. Once there, she wavered as the green washed over her, her stomach heaving, more memories clawing to the surface. Pansy shook her head and focussed on the dais, on the girl lying there. Estelle had not moved, and Pansy’s throat closed in on itself a little bit.

The Death Eaters made no sound as she passed them. But she could sense their heads turning one after another to follow her progress. Strangely, with each person passed came a tendril of anger instead of fear. Her heart’s thudding turned into a steady thrum, fast and strong, flooding her with adrenaline. She clenched her jaw at the thought of them winning, after all her work, all her sacrifices. All the pain she’d learned to push aside, and then to cope with. But never to forget.

Her steps echoed as she went, gaining in speed. No one attempted to stop her, and then she was at the dais, staring down at a small girl with blonde hair and freckles across her nose, long fingers, slender hands, delicate chin. She was asleep, her chest rising and falling serenely.

Pansy bent, hesitated for a single second, and slid her arms under the girl’s knees and shoulders. She tucked Estelle’s head under her chin, took a moment to get as good a grip as she could. And turned around. Carried her away from the dais.

It was then that one of the Death Eaters moved; the closest one on her right stepped forward soundlessly, right into her path. His frame was tall, shoulders broad. Long, thin fingers showed beneath the hems of his sleeves.

He was coming closer. She didn’t need to see his face; she knew who he was.

“Don’t touch her,” Pansy rasped. Still, her voice echoed, vibrant in the quiet room. The figure in the cloak stopped moving. His hood shivered as if disturbed by an exhalation.

Pansy looked right at him. “She was never yours,” she said. The words floated. Pansy lifted her chin. “Don’t you dare lay a hand on her. I’ll kill you if you do.”

Estelle’s hands clutched dreamily at the fabric of Pansy’s shirt. Her body heat beat between them. Pansy turned away from the Death Eater and began to walk back up the centre path, her eyes on the huge doorway.

They did not follow her. She stepped clear of the green light, leaving them behind, and stood there holding Estelle, staring blankly before her. Then she stumbled to the side, turning until her back hit the wall, and slid down it with Estelle in her arms. This time the tears could not be stopped.

“Are you all right, love?” came Helga’s voice after a few moments.

Pansy shook her head, back and forth, feeling as if she would never stop. “She’s not mine. Not anymore.”

“Oh, my dear…”

She was so small. So very small in Pansy’s arms. It was an odd thought, because she wasn’t particularly tiny, but she felt small, and fragile. Precious. Breathing slowly, her eyes flickering under closed lids. Dreaming. Pansy had not watched her child dream for over a decade.

“She’s th— their daughter,” she managed.

“Let her be theirs. Let it happen, love. She _is_ theirs. But she is yours, too. It is not either-or, my dear. She is a part of you and you are a part of her.”

For a while, Pansy sat without speaking, without being spoken to, just cradling Estelle and watching her sleep.

“You are a very loyal person, dear, whether you believe it or not,” Helga said presently. “Loyal to your daughter, loyal to yourself. Your beliefs. Your decisions. I would have been proud to call you a Hufflepuff.”

Pansy wiped at her cheeks. “Always thought I was fit for another house.”

Helga Hufflepuff smiled. Her face became even softer, even rosier. “Oh, my dear. That was our mistake, for there is never any absolutism. You are ‘fit’ for all four houses.”

* * *

 **In the Room**

 

The light was a washed-out yellow over the backs of Scorpius’ hands. He stared down at them, not blinking. Not really looking at anything. It was so quiet now.

Lavinia had been the first to go. Scorpius had managed a glimpse of a sneering, silver-bearded face shimmering from bits of shiny stone before the wall had snaked out and snatched her away. She hadn’t even time to scream. The lights had dimmed immediately after, but the scramble to get closer to the others had little effect; when the light flared brightly again, Aubrey was taken by one of the women. Her portrait frame had immediately been vacated once he was gone.

After that, the other three had huddled together in the centre of the room for a long time. The sourceless light had gone low again. Estelle had plastered herself to Scorpius’ side and hung on. He’d wrapped his arm around her back, thinking that there wasn’t any way under the sun to get her away from him.

He’d been wrong. Now there were only two of them left.

In the silence, Scorpius’ thoughts had begun to stray wildly. His bedroom back home… where his wand might be… who would go next, him or Albus Potter? Was Estelle all right? His mother. His father.

Scorpius’ throat felt sore. He swallowed, tasting sour words he remembered far too well. Months and months of them. But he couldn’t remember his father ever responding in kind. It scared him that he’d never noticed that before. It had never once occurred to him.

Albus shifted where he sat immediately behind him. “What is going _on?_ ” Scorpius heard him mutter. It was the second time his housemate had said those words, but this time they sounded listless instead of angry. It was such a vague question, asked of nobody who would answer it, and yet Scorpius felt its weight like nothing else thus far. Being in the room, being slowly separated one by one… Not knowing why was worse. Not knowing when, or if, they would get out of it.

His father’s tired face slid into his mind again. Scorpius shut his eyes. Always tired now. But it had been that way before, hadn’t it? For a long time, his father had looked worn down, over the previous summer when Scorpius had been at home. His mother was fragile and volatile, of course he’d noticed that. But somehow he’d missed what had been happening to his dad. Missed it, or let it slide off of him. Or maybe he just couldn’t have seen it then, not without the context of his parents’ split, not without knowing what his father had done.

“Potter,” he said.

“Yeah?”

Scorpius kept his eyes on the line where the wall met the ceiling. “Your dad’s gay, isn’t he?”

There was a pause. “Yeah.”

Scorpius nodded. “But your parents were happy. Right?”

Scorpius heard the slide of Albus’ shoes over the floor stones as he shifted. “For a while, they were. My mum was. But Dad wasn’t. Took a while for us to catch on, though. My dad’s not the expressive type.”

Scorpius felt like his mind was emptying slowly, slipping out like an ocean tide and whirling back in again in a soft rush. “Were you angry?”

“With my dad, you mean?”

Scorpius nodded again.

“I…” Albus was quiet for a few seconds. “For a little while. Yeah. I thought he was being selfish. I was angry for Mum, for him splitting up the family.”

“Yeah,” Scorpius sighed.

“But he didn’t.” Albus had turned around, Scorpius could tell. “Not really. We aren’t… split. They could have done that, and they didn’t.”

Who exactly had split up his own family? Scorpius pressed his lips together, not liking the familiar sensation caused by that line of thought. It always gave him an ache low in his gut, harsh and unforgiving. He’d always let the fury take over and drive it off for as long as possible. He’d always decided on his father as the culprit, the one who had strayed, who had broken the foundation of his marriage.

His father had helped, most definitely. But the truth was Scorpius hadn’t seen his mother in months, since the fight. Hadn’t heard from her. His father kept him fed and clothed, and educated, and his mother… was nowhere. Hadn’t answered any of his Owls. Hadn’t Flooed once.

“Do you hate your father?” he asked suddenly.

The response was a long time coming. “Do you?” Albus asked curiously.

He didn’t know. Merlin, he didn’t _know_. Or he did know and wasn’t ready to admit it.

Maybe he’d already admitted it.

He just wanted to see his dad. See him, and worry about all the rest, all that they’d both said and done, later.

“They’ll find us,” Albus murmured. Scorpius couldn’t answer. He looked back down at his hands, feeling his eyes burn.

He thought the returning brightness was his imagination at first, until Albus stood up and tugged him to his feet. Scorpius turned so their backs were together and gripped the other boy’s wrist with one hand. They stared tensely at the empty frames on the walls.

The one directly before Scorpius began to dance with colour: gold and red, and several sparking bits of emerald. They formed into a graven face that bore a fiery beard mottled with strands of grey. Hair that seemed tinted with sunlight framed a strong forehead and darkly browed green eyes that pierced right into him. Scorpius tightened his grip on Albus’ wrist.

“It is time for the test,” the man said.

“My test?” Scorpius croaked.

The man only looked at him.

* * *

 **The Trial of Draco Malfoy**

 

Oddly, it was after the wall closed between them that Draco could feel Harry’s hands on his body again, faint brushes of sense memory caressing his nerve endings like actual touches at his hips, his chest… inside him. His legs felt weak and he stepped unevenly, not certain if he would fall with the next turn or remain upright. His fingers trailed the cold stone of the walls and some latent part of his brain remembered the traverse, which walls with frames that opened, which headed in the wrong direction. The castle seemed utterly quiet, as silent as the room in which he’d woken that morning, shaking from his dreams and sensing the presence of another person next to him.

Heat, and skin. Slow breathing. Harry’s face had been so peaceful, the worry for his son dormant as his body recovered from the strain. Harry had a perfect arc to his throat, the way it curved when his head was turned slightly to the side, the shadows thrown across it.

Draco lifted the edge of his shirt to wipe his brow and smelled Harry’s scent in the fabric. His steps faltered and he leaned against the wall with one hand, overwhelmed, trying to breathe normally.

It was not the time to think about Harry, what he and Harry had or didn’t have. Or might never have, if he was right about what he was being asked to do. He hadn’t the faintest clue how it would turn out. He wasn’t even sure he understood his own conjectures and their implications. Just that there had been a room they hadn’t tried, and it was just afterward that he had apparently ‘failed.’

This test took pieces of them, took them away and dissolved them in the lye of unforgiving lessons about their children and themselves. About others. Harry, who had sacrificed his child simply by offering to help. Theodore, who had stumbled out of his test haunted and hurting and _relieved_ beyond anything Draco had ever seen in him since the war. Healed in some indecipherable way. And hugging his daughter, which was uncommon for them. Greg, whose son was terribly smart and terribly attached to his father despite their extreme differences.

Draco ached to see his son, to know he was safe, with the chance of again becoming the person who’d been buried under sullenness for so long. His heart hurt in halves, one side older and scarred for Scorpius, one side new and raw for Harry.

Room after room, frame after frame, passage after passage: Draco walked in a haze, muttering spells and walking again. A primal part of his brain was thinking for him because the rest was in turmoil, showing him seething fire, then his son’s face, then the final emotion in Harry’s eyes as the wall had separated them. Draco ground his teeth absently as he worked his way through the maze, trying not to think and failing miserably.

Then the wall opened up before him, at last revealing the room with a single black scar running down the far wall. Draco stood in the passageway, his body shivering as if he’d been plunged into ice water. He couldn’t get his feet to move. The air was cool and clean, but he could smell the Fiendfyre’s smoke as if it were curling directly through the stone and into his nose.

Draco made himself take a step forward. Kept going until he reached the opposite wall. Began the first spell along the edge of the frame.

This time, it did not take long to open. The fury hit Draco in a blast of hot wind, and he squeezed his eyes shut, unable to hold back his gasp. Sulfur filled his nostrils, burning air and flying ash. Draco stayed where he was, raised a hand to shield his eyes, and forced them open.

The heads of monstrous creatures cavorted in the flames, vaulting high and exploding with loud cracks, only to be absorbed into the new monsters forming underneath. They spit molten stone, flames spewing from their eyes and noses like blood, and watched him, carnivores awaiting their inevitable prey.

Already knowing the result, Draco raised his wand. “Aquafera.” The water went up in a cloud of steam before it even touched the floor. The ice created from the next spell followed in its wake. Draco lowered his wand slowly.

The faint sound of grinding came to him from somewhere beyond the flames. He squinted and found a pocket of light that did not belong to the Fiendfyre: a doorway had opened on the opposite side of the room. There was someone standing in it, staring awestruck at the inferno between them.

Draco knew his own child. He could see Scorpius through the thick and bursting flames, a long, wavering shadow.

“Scorpius,” he called, and was surprised by how flat his voice was, how calm. “Stay there.”

“It _is_ you,” came his son’s voice over the roar, a thin wisp of breath. “Dad—”

“Don’t move.”

Draco ran his hand up and down the inexplicably cool outer stones, bumping over the uneven surface, feeling each ridge and hollow with his fingers. The heat buffeted him, billowing his shirt and trouser legs. His hair felt grainy with sweat. He pushed it out of his eyes and drew a breath. Let it out. Drew another. Turned his head and watched as the owner of the picture frame behind him swirled into view and solidified.

“You can tell him I’m coming to get him now,” Draco whispered.

Godric Gryffindor nodded once. His mosaic face shimmered and vanished. Draco looked back at the fire, shading his eyes against the glare.

The room was not long; Draco could see the end of it, and his son’s silhouette against the other doorway. Not all of the floor was burning. A narrow trail of smoking stone wavered back and forth as the Fiendfyre wove across it, the stones as black as tar. There was no real pattern that Draco could see, but then, he’d not expected this much anyway, not from such an inferno.

He might get ten steps. If he was lucky. He’d just have to make those ten steps go far enough.

Draco became aware that Scorpius was speaking, the pitch of his voice echoing off the cavernous ceiling. It wasn’t loud enough for Draco to make out the words, but he could hear the query in them, the upward lilt of his son’s voice at the end of whatever he was asking.

And then the first cry, vociferous in a way Scorpius had not been since the night his mother had left.

“Dad! Tell me he’s lying.”

Tears flooded Draco’s eyes, blurring the fire into undefined orange. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and leaned against the frame of stones for one more moment, then cleared his throat. “Scorpius, promise me you’ll stay there.”

There was nothing but the roar, and then—

“Dad, no! _No!_ ” Scorpius howled, the fire snapping his words into shuddery bits.

Draco let go of the wall. Stepped forward into the furnace and began to run.

* * *

The fire went out with an icy hiss, sucking away into the floor stones and leaving the room cool and damp. Draco skidded to a halt, unable to breathe, blinking and shaking and not breathing.

“Dad,” came a whisper.

Draco’s heart started up again with a painful thud. He gasped and clutched at himself, staring wildly across the room until his son swam into view. Scorpius stood rigid in his own doorway, eyes wide and dilated.

“Well done,” said Gryffindor’s voice, the voice from his dream. “Well done indeed.”

“What—?” Draco coughed, his teeth beginning to chatter, his muscles to clench. It was just hitting him; somewhere he knew that he and his son were out of danger. But he couldn’t comprehend.

“You have never believed this. You never will, I suspect. But I stand by my assessment: you would have made an exemplary Gryffindor.”

Something hit Draco hard in the midsection. He staggered back, feeling arms seize around him, a face burying itself in his shoulder, hands clutching at his shirt. “Dad, you— You _idiot_ —”

“Scorpius,” Draco rasped, and suddenly his son was hitting him with a fist, a stiff blow to his side, and Draco was staring into a sooty, tear-streaked face.

“The fuck did you do that for?” Scorpius shouted at him. “You’d have been killed!”

Draco reached up and stroked his son’s cheek, ran his fingers through messy blond hair. Eyes so like Astoria’s filled again and Scorpius didn’t bother to check the tears as they rolled down his cheeks.

“Needed to get to you,” Draco whispered. He could hear his own voice trembling.

Scorpius’ face twisted, and this time he did duck his head, hugging Draco close again and pressing into his shoulder. “I’m… Dad, I’m sorry. I’m so… so sorry.”

Draco felt heat slide down his own cheeks, the tears quickly turning cold. He stroked the back of his son’s head and bent to kiss his hair. “I’m sorry, too.”

* * *

One moment it was quiet. The air smelled only of Scorpius. The next moment, the noise was horrendous: it sounded as if a hundred people were shouting and yelling at once. Scorpius did not flinch at the cacophony. His grip around Draco was firm and unbreakable. Draco settled a hand on his son’s head, tangling his fingers in fine blond strands.

“Scorpius?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” came his son’s voice under the mayhem of sound. “Yeah.”

Draco pressed his lips to Scorpius’ head again and finally looked up. The towering atrium of Hogwarts rose above them, and it was filled to the brim with people. They were all rushing toward him, Granger at the front. She grabbed hold of his shoulder when she reached him and gripped tightly as if to make sure he was there. Her other hand found Scorpius’ arm.

“Draco? Oh my god, thank the Founders, you’ve got him,” she breathed. “We thought the worst! Nott said he’d been made to face his demons, and then you went back in, and Harry said something about Fiendfyre and we thought— I thought—” She swung around, taking in the clamouring people behind her, and moved closer to block Draco and his son from sight. She looked very tired. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

Draco’s voice didn’t come immediately. “No,” he said at last. “We’re not hurt.”

He swayed as people bumped them from behind and pushed Granger into them. She steadied them as well as she could. “The media’s found out,” she informed him. “They arrived about an hour ago, just in time to ambush Pansy and Estelle.”

Draco followed her gaze and saw his former housemate standing in the middle of a small group of people. For a moment he didn’t recognise Alric Marriott glowering forebodingly at several nervous-looking reporters. Gloria Marriott stood beside him. Her arms were clasped around Pansy and the small girl they held sandwiched between them. Pansy’s hair was a mess and she looked haunted, as if she weren’t quite sure what to make of her situation.

Professors were scattered here and there, looking extremely harried; parents Draco recognised from visitation days stood in small groups beyond the major bustle, looking confused and intimidated by turns. Wizards and witches in Auror garb were yelling for order over the commotion.

“Let’s get you out of this,” Granger said. She placed a hand on his back and began to guide him through the press, sheltering Scorpius as best she could. She slapped away the hands that pawed at Draco, but he didn’t have more than a faint sense of them.

A sudden, new shout erupted behind them and the crowd around Draco surged past him, jostling Scorpius. Draco held his son tightly as the tide ebbed and cast a dazed look back at whatever the uproar was.

His eyes took in Harry, standing in the crowd near the now-darkened passageway in the wall. Draco blinked and saw a younger version of Harry Potter standing beside him, leaning bodily against his father. Harry’s arms were firmly around the boy’s shoulders. And then people stepped between and Draco lost sight of them.

His mind caught at the brief image of a whitened face and wide green eyes locked momentarily with his own, and spun it through his thoughts again and again.

This time their passage out of the melee was unhindered. Granger led them to the quietest corner she could find and helped Draco sit down. It was a good thing, because he nearly collapsed on his own once they were out of the crowd. Scorpius settled on the floor with him and hunched against his side, one arm still curled around Draco’s waist. Draco could feel his son’s every breath.

It was a few minutes before he realised someone else was in their vicinity. Kingsley Shacklebolt had come up just behind Granger and was talking to her quietly. Draco saw her nod and step aside to let him pass. The head of the Ministry came forward and knelt down in front of Draco.

“Professor Granger tells me you’re both all right?” he asked.

Draco nodded. Shacklebolt glanced over his shoulder at the mass of people and frowned.

“I apologise for the insanity. I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now, but we, the Ministry, not the media, have a few questions for you.”

“Ask them, whatever they are,” Draco answered softly. “But then I’m taking my son home.”

* * *

The current headmistress of Hogwarts made short work of what came after, and promptly sent the students and professors home for two and a half weeks. The only people who stayed were Granger and a team of Aurors, all of whom set to work dismantling the re-creation spell and picking through the castle’s magical signatures inch by inch. For some reason, Granger thought it necessary to update Draco on their progress with a steady flow of owls. It took Draco several days of irritation to realise that he was probably not the only one receiving the news.

The manor was the same building it had always been, but Draco felt that the rooms were now somehow lighter, the structure less imposing. His son’s silence, while still present often enough, was a different sort of silence, a stillness of voice that held no barbs, only the gentle hum of thought. Scorpius seemed to be pondering not only the walls of the mansion, but every piece of furniture, every oaken door and mullioned window. Draco entered a room several times to find his son already in it, studying the spines of books in the library or the collection of Astoria’s vases in the main ballroom.

One day toward the end of the first week, he walked into his former wife’s chambers, looking to retrieve the dress cloaks he’d kept in her closet. The idea was to move them to where they truly belonged: his closet.

But it did not end up happening that afternoon.

Draco halted as soon as he saw Scorpius. His son stood halfway inside Astoria’s massive wardrobe, looking down at the deep blue scarf he was holding. The fabric shimmered as if lit from behind. It had been a gift, though Draco couldn’t remember from how long ago.

Scorpius looked up. His hands tightened around the scarf. “Sorry, I’ll… I was just looking at Mum’s things.”

Draco wasn’t sure what to say, but Scorpius didn’t seem to need an answer.

“Wonder if she’d want these.” The boy’s gaze took in the neatly folded piles of scarves and shawls, emerald gowns and fire-red sashes.

“She’s… not well, Scorpius,” Draco said carefully. His son looked back at him for a long moment and then dropped his eyes to the scarf he held.

“I know,” he said softly. His shoulders tensed, and Draco felt hollow and useless. “I just…” Scorpius looked up again. “Dad, I know.”

Draco studied his son and nodded. “I’ll come back.” He made to leave the room.

“I also know it’s not your fault.”

Draco stopped and shut his eyes. His pulse thumped in his temples. “Scorpius—”

“I mean…” His son trailed off. Draco turned around and plainly saw the search for words on Scorpius’ face. “How she’s been since then. How she’s been to me.”

Draco sighed. “It may very well be my fault, Scorpius.”

“It’s her decision who to punish,” Scorpius cut in. His expression had become distinctly harder, his eyes a little unfocussed. “And… how to do it.”

Scorpius blinked, and Draco’s heart jumped at the dampness in his son’s eyes, so out of tune with the tone of his voice. He stepped forward before he could think about it. “Come here.”

Scorpius came without a word, enfolding himself in Draco’s arms and swallowing audibly. Draco couldn’t see his face any longer, but he could feel the intake of breath and he could hear each unsteady exhalation.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispered, caressing Scorpius’ hair with one hand. “It never was your fault. It was mine.”

“And hers.”

Draco sighed. “It was both of us. But I am so very sorry that you were the one we hurt.”

Scorpius’ grip around him tightened. “I don’t enjoy being so mad all the time. Just… I want you to know that.”

Draco smiled faintly. Scorpius continued. “Not sure who I’m mad at.”

The ache returned to Draco’s belly, but he shouldered it aside and rubbed Scorpius’ back. “Well. We’ve got time to figure it out.”

* * *

Harry opened the front door at Draco’s second knock. His eyes widened and he swung the door wide, stepping back. “Hey.”

Draco stood on the doorstep of the modest house, his hands chilly even with his gloves on. The storm had come abruptly two evenings before and brought icy wind along with it, leaving frost overnight that quickly melted under the onslaught and dripped off the trees. “Harry. May I come in?”

“Of course.” Harry let go of the knob and backed further into the house. It took Draco some effort to make his legs work, but then he stepped through the door and closed it behind him. The house was quiet; the hall light was off, leaving grey rain-glimmers to slip down the walls. Behind Harry, Draco could see a lamp on in the kitchen. It spilled a warm yellow pool across the hall rug. On the table, there was a teapot and a steaming mug.

“Come in.” Harry had been staring at him, but finally he turned and led the way toward the lighted kitchen. “I’ve tea. It’s apple spice.”

“No, thank you.” Draco removed his cloak slowly, took out his wand and dried the material. He folded it and hung it over the back of one of the chairs. Harry waited until he’d sat down to resume his place at the table. One hand encircled his mug, and the steam rose between them, giving Harry’s face an ethereal mistiness.

“How’s Scorpius?” Harry asked.

“Visiting my mother for the afternoon.” Draco smiled briefly. “There’s a lot he’d like to talk about. Didn’t fancy making him say it to me.”

Harry nodded. “Is he still—”

Draco shook his head. “No. We’re doing all right. A good deal better than we were.”

“That’s good.”

Draco tapped a finger absently against his leg. Outside, the wind whistled, slamming rain into the house in gusts. He glanced back down the hallway to the front door and the sitting room. There didn’t seem to be any other lights on in the house. “Where’s Albus?”

“Ginny got home three days ago. She was a little… concerned when she heard about everything at Hogwarts. Al and Lily will be with her until next week.” Harry took a sip of his tea and set the mug back down. There was something in his face, something a little more removed than it should have been. Draco looked out the window at the torrent and then met Harry’s eyes.

“Do you know why they took him?”

He didn’t need to elaborate; he could see Harry understood. Draco watched as the other man worried his lip. “They told Al. Or one of them did. Did Scorpius tell you about the room they were all in?”

“Yes.”

Harry let out a breath. “Al was the last one there. Had to wait until I passed my test.”

Draco frowned. “Shacklebolt said you didn’t go back inside.”

“Exactly.” Harry’s face looked suddenly much older, lined and tired and confused. “You remember, the first time we went in, and I couldn’t open any of the frames? It only worked for you, even when we used the same spells.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I wasn’t supposed to be there.” Harry heaved a sigh and shifted in his chair. “It was for you to do.”

Draco opened his mouth to answer, but Harry continued, eyes downcast. “Apparently I’m… still me.”

“I don’t—”

“Had to let you all do it,” Harry muttered. Draco stared at him, and the rain drummed on.

“What?”

“I’m still angry about it,” Harry said on another sigh. “I don’t think I agree with their methods. The test was to teach me that I can’t do everything myself. I was supposed to... to trust the rest of you. To do what had to be done. To save your children, and mine.”

Draco nodded slowly. “They told Albus this?”

Harry’s face cracked into a tiny smile. “Yeah. And he agrees with them, can you believe it? I seem to be a bit of a control freak.”

“I wouldn’t call you that.”

Harry shrugged one shoulder. His expression had gone blank again. He looked down into his mug. “Well, then I have trouble accepting help. And staying uninvolved. It’s the way I was then, too. During the war.”

“Some things never change,” Draco said, and Harry looked up at him. Something swept across his features and vanished. Harry laughed.

“Yeah.”

They sat silently for some time, Harry stirring his tea methodically with a spoon, Draco watching the rain streak down the window glass. Lightning sparked across the sky far away, sending a white flush over the dark clouds. The thunder did not come for some time.

“It’s good to see you.” Harry hadn’t spoken loudly or forcefully, but still his voice startled Draco. When he’d collected himself, he nodded.

“Thought I should…” He gestured aimlessly. “See how you were.”

Harry smiled again and raised his mug, only to set it back down before it reached his mouth. “You scared me. Scared us all.”

Draco sat back with a sigh. “Scared myself.”

Harry didn’t answer. He went back to stirring. Draco watched him, wanting to catch his eye, to meet that gaze and hold it. But Harry wasn’t looking at him.

“Truth is, I haven’t been sleeping very well,” Draco said.

Harry nodded sympathetically.

Draco hesitated. “I realised…” He forced himself not to look away. “I still feel like I’m missing something.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“You.” This time Draco did catch Harry’s gaze, watching his eyes widen, watching them flick back and forth. Draco lifted his hand and moved it across the table until he touched the backs of Harry’s fingers.

Harry let out a long, harsh breath. His eyes pinched shut. He pulled his hand away from Draco’s and rubbed his forehead. “Oh…”

Draco’s chest gave a small, distressed heave. He straightened, retracting his hand, but suddenly both of Harry’s had trapped his, fingers closing around his wrist and palm. Draco caught his breath.

“Don’t,” Harry said. His thumb stroked over the top of Draco’s wrist. He shivered involuntarily. Harry spoke again, his voice much less fervent.

“I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

Harry’s face was open in a way it hadn’t been, except once, a time that Draco only remembered through a drunken haze. Draco licked his lips. “How long?”

“Five months. That night.”

Draco blinked. “I…”

Harry shook his head, pain skirting his features. “Didn’t know what I’d find. When she called, I just came, saw what had really happened, and took you home. Went over again to check on Scorpius. And then I came back and you were out of your mind in liquor. You were losing your family, your life— I _never_ would have done anything. Just wanted to help you. But… I don’t know what it was that did it. Your smell, your voice? You grabbed me, and I just… Something reacted then, and kept reacting, even after you were gone.”

Harry’s shoulders shook. “I didn’t pay attention to what it was for weeks.”

Draco curled his fingers around Harry’s. He could feel his own pulse over the sound of the rain, thumping in his ears like heavy water drops. Harry looked up at him and went still, his mouth partly open. Draco stood, keeping his hold on Harry’s fingers, and took a step around the table. Harry continued to stare up at him. His breathing was visibly unsteady.

“I hope you’re paying attention now.” It came out so weakly that Draco didn’t recognise his own voice. Harry didn’t move for several seconds, and then his chair scraped as he stood. His free hand rose and settled on Draco’s waist, surprisingly warm. Draco inhaled, moving backward as Harry approached. The only sound was the thrumming storm and their uneven breathing. Draco gripped Harry’s fingers, feeling their bodies brush as they continued to shuffle away from the table, a slow dance with no plan. Harry’s nose touched his cheek and Draco felt an exhalation rush over his throat. He swallowed, let go of the hand he held, and reached up to grip Harry’s nape instead.

“Your tea’ll go cold,” Draco whispered. Harry’s fingers brushed his face.

“It’s okay,” he whispered back, and kissed him. A tilt of the head, just a touch of lips and warm breath. Draco leaned forward and caught Harry’s mouth more firmly, pressing until Harry’s lips parted and he could taste him, feel his tongue and teeth. Memories flooded in, of those hands on him before, of clothing tugged away and kisses interrupted by gasps for air. Draco murmured, clenching his fingers on the base of Harry’s neck, stroking his thumb over the soft flesh of his throat.

They were out of the kitchen before Draco noticed, moving along another shadowed hallway. Draco caught Harry’s face in both hands and turned it, kissing his jaw and just below his ear. His shirt had risen up and one of Harry’s hands was beneath it, tugging them together so that their knees bumped with every step.

Suddenly Harry wrapped his arm around him and snugged him close, hips and chests pressed tightly together. Draco was nearly on his toes, his mouth being ravished, breath stuttering under the close grip of Harry’s arm. He dragged his hands through Harry’s hair, fisting it between his fingers and guiding Harry’s head until their embrace was breathless and desperate. Harry pushed with his entire body, forcing Draco backward— through a doorway— he caught glimpses of rain streaked windows and open blinds, a chest of drawers and a closet door. He kissed Harry back, sliding a hand under his collar to feel the warm expanse of his bare shoulders. But the urgency was fading; Harry’s momentum had slowed, his hands roving, searching and touching down as they went. He nudged Draco’s chin up and kissed his throat. Draco felt the damp flicker of Harry’s tongue and hissed.

He could see the bed behind them, neatly made. He grabbed a handful of Harry’s shirt and backed up, urging the other man to follow, until he sat down on the bed. Harry moved to stand between his parted knees. Draco caught his gaze and pulled him downward until their mouths met again.

Harry smelled so good, like sweat and recent sleep, and apples. His hair was soft black, with greying strands slipping across Draco’s fingers. Hands climbed up Draco’s chest, rucking his shirt higher, thumbs kneading and pressing, and Draco had to pull away to breathe. Harry’s fingers grazed his stomach, sending a violent shiver through him, muscles tensing on their own. He squeezed his knees tightly around Harry’s legs and felt the shift as the other man moved one knee up onto the bed, pressing firmly against the inside of his thigh.

Draco caught Harry’s eyes again for a second and nodded, just a little bob of his head. He wasn’t sure what question he was answering, but it felt correct. He disentangled his hand from Harry’s hair and reached over his shoulder to gather up his mussed shirt. As he dragged it over his head between them, Harry moved again, bringing his other knee up to kneel over Draco on the bed. He leaned forward and kissed Draco deeply, and the shirt was lost somewhere, forgotten.

This time Harry was the one to remove his glasses. He reached around Draco, his shirt brushing Draco’s bare chest, and tossed the spectacles onto his bedside table. Draco looked down and found the flat plane of Harry’s stomach, dark hair disappearing under the beltline of his jeans. He must have moved somehow because Harry’s fingers were there, unbuckling his own belt. Draco tore his eyes away and went for Harry’s shirt, shoving it up to reveal the rest of his chest, lifting Harry’s arms until Harry reached up and pulled the shirt the rest of the way off. Draco groped all the way down Harry’s chest and stomach until he found the buttons of his jeans.

“Come here, I—” He settled for kissing Harry on the mouth, inching backward as he yanked each button free. Harry dropped onto one arm over him, pushing Draco onto his back. Draco could feel the cool crush of the duvet underneath him and hear the sounds of their remaining clothing rustling over the fabric. Harry pressed him into the mattress again with another kiss, and then trailed over his chin and down to the hollow of his throat. Draco blinked at the ceiling, curling his toes with each press of Harry’s mouth. He worked his hand into Harry’s pants and rubbed him. Harry gasped and pulled up, shuddering. Draco continued the slow motion of his hand, looking Harry directly in the eye, watching each shiver wrack its way through him.

Then Harry grabbed his wrist. With his other hand, he tugged Draco’s trousers open and pulled them down around his hips in urgent jerks, inching them lower. Draco raised his hips off the bed; Harry’s eyes went dark. He pulled the trousers completely off and glided his hand up Draco’s thigh until he’d reached his hip again. And there he stopped.

Draco was about to ask when Harry whispered the protection spell. The other man pulled back and shimmied out of his jeans, kicking them off his feet to the floor. Draco didn’t let him finish; he hooked a leg around one of Harry’s and eased him close again. Harry went still again, looking down at him with questioning eyes.

“Please,” Draco whispered. He lifted his head off the duvet and nibbled Harry’s chin, propped himself up and kissed his nose. His cheek. His mouth. Harry leaned into him, easing him down onto his back again. Their bodies brushed and Draco tensed his legs around Harry, pulling him closer until they were pressed fully together. Harry shuddered again. He leaned down on his elbows and stroked Draco’s face with both hands, weaving fingers up into his hair.

“You’re extraordinary,” Harry murmured. “You know that?”

Draco wanted to tell him that he was far from extraordinary, that he had some very ugly things about him. But then he felt fingers skate over one of those things in particular, and turned his head to find Harry caressing his left forearm. Harry bent and kissed the spot just at the inside of his elbow. Draco swallowed.

He rubbed his right leg along Harry’s side.

Harry eyes locked on him. Draco sighed at the heat flooding between them. Hands came back and lifted his knees, curled them nearly to his chest. He felt Harry’s finger slip inside him and he shut his eyes. Breathed as he was opened up. Looked up again at last as Harry finished.

The actual push into his body was silent and intense. Draco gasped, gripped Harry’s arm, and forced himself to breathe. Harry’s eyes had dilated, his own breathing quick and unsteady. Draco clenched the muscles in his legs and feet, digging his toes into the bed, fisting the fingers of his free hand in the duvet. Harry covered his hand with his own. He moved slowly forward, inward. Draco let out another broken gasp and craned his head back, biting his lip. Then Harry was fully inside, and they were staring at each other, panting heavily.

Draco worked his hand free and laced his fingers with Harry’s. Squeezed.

“Okay?” Harry asked breathlessly.

Draco reached up and gripped Harry’s shoulder. Held it for another long second. Nodded.

The first thrust shot pulses up his spine, making him whimper and clench. It wasn’t quite pain. Wasn’t quite pleasure. But it was overwhelming. Draco heard something near a sob spill from his own mouth. He pulled Harry’s head down and kissed him hard, nipping at his tongue and lips. Fighting for breath when their mouths slipped apart. Harry’s rhythm was steady and fulfilling, and uncompromising. Draco lost his breath as often as he gained it back. He clung to Harry and rolled his hips up with each motion, relishing the rising tremors he could feel rippling through Harry’s body.

His belly began to ache. The backs of his thighs burned, a relentless heat that itched to be satisfied. Draco hissed and tightened his legs, pulling Harry deeper, hearing him groan. Sweat dripped down Harry’s throat and over his shoulders to his chest. Draco kissed Harry’s bent forehead, pressed his lips there until he was forced to breathe again. When Harry reached between them, however, Draco couldn’t hold it and arched, cried out. Arched again. Every thrust sent heat slithering through his pelvis and down his legs. He grabbed for Harry, felt the other man catch his hand and push his arm to the bed. Fingers clenched at his wrist and Draco tumbled right over, stuttering and writhing. Waves of after-heat washed over him, and he panted as Harry continued to move, harder and faster, pushing him down into the mattress with each thrust. Harry’s eyelids fluttered violently and he came, his whole body jerking. Draco felt this one more than all the rest. He held his breath until Harry’s climax ended, and then breathed out as his lover collapsed onto him.

“Oh,” Draco whispered. “Oh, gods.”

Harry stirred. Draco grabbed him before he could rise and turned his head to kiss him. Harry made a tiny, tired sound and returned the kiss, allowing Draco all the control. Draco kissed Harry, tasted and fondled his mouth until his head began to swim. When they broke apart again, Draco was dizzy.

He loosened his grip on Harry’s waist, letting his legs fall to the sides. Harry’s back rose and fell as he caught his breath, one hand firmly on Draco’s hip, the fingers of the other still entwined with Draco’s. Draco closed his eyes and mouthed Harry’s shoulder until his lover lifted himself off of him and parted their bodies. Harry flopped onto his side on the mattress and rolled onto his back, one arm over his eyes. The grey light made his chest glisten.

Draco could feel the tingles still roving his body, tiny shivers that pulsed here and there, into his fingertips, over his face and deep into his chest. He breathed out in a whoosh. His heart was still thudding too hard.

Harry turned his head, uncovering darkened eyes. Draco stared into them, any words lifting themselves away like ash. A hand settled on his forearm and stayed there.

“Regrets?” Harry asked softly.

Draco shook his head. He reached over and fingered Harry’s sweaty fringe away from his face. Smoothed his palm over Harry’s cheek.

“Good,” Harry breathed. His lips formed into a smile, one that demanded an answering one. Draco gave it.

They shifted closer and then lay there for some time, Harry’s hand on Draco’s arm, Draco’s resting on Harry’s chest. Draco listened to their breathing as it slowed, concentrating on the beat of Harry’s heart under his palm. Finally, Harry rolled over to face him, winding their legs together. “Tired?”

Draco nodded wordlessly.

Harry kissed his lips lightly, and then lingered there, thoroughly caressing Draco’s mouth with his tongue. “One-time thing?” he whispered, very quietly.

 _“No,”_ Draco breathed, rolling Harry onto his back and returning the kiss a little desperately. Both of Harry’s hands wove into his hair and remained there until they were done.

Harry’s incredible eyes were glazed when they finally parted. Draco looked down at him. “I can’t stay,” he said softly. “Scorpius will be home in a few hours.”

His lover’s gaze was soft and fixated for a long moment. Then Harry smiled. Pulled Draco closer. “I’ll set my alarm.”

~fin~


End file.
